BitMine adds $49m in ether as Tom Lee links accumulation to Robinhood’s new layer-2
BitMine bought 27,801 ETH as chairman Tom Lee cited early demand from Robinhood Chain, pushing its treasury above 5.77 million ether.
BitMine Immersion Technologies has added a further 27,801 ether, worth roughly $49 million at current prices, to its corporate treasury, taking its total holdings above 5.77 million ETH. The purchase, disclosed by the Nasdaq-listed miner-turned-treasury company, came as chairman Tom Lee pointed to early usage of Robinhood Chain, a newly launched layer-2 network, as a fresh source of demand for the Ethereum ecosystem.
The acquisition extends BitMine’s strategy of building one of the largest corporate ether reserves of any listed company, a stance that has made the firm a bellwether for institutional sentiment towards Ethereum even as the token’s spot price has softened. ETH was trading at around $1,775 at the time of the purchase, down roughly 2.4% on the day, according to market data accompanying both reports.
Robinhood’s layer-2 push
Lee, who chairs BitMine, framed the buying as consistent with what he described as early demand for Robinhood Chain, a layer-2 network associated with the US trading platform Robinhood. The emergence of a brokerage-linked blockchain infrastructure layer is significant for institutional observers because it signals a further step by regulated financial firms towards building settlement and trading rails directly on Ethereum-adjacent infrastructure, rather than merely offering crypto trading to retail customers.
For European market participants, the development is notable less for the price of ether than for what it implies about the direction of institutional infrastructure spending. Layer-2 networks built or backed by established, licensed financial firms carry different regulatory and counterparty implications than purely crypto-native chains, a distinction that UK and EU regulators have increasingly sought to draw when assessing systemic risk in digital asset markets.
A treasury strategy under scrutiny
BitMine’s accumulation strategy mirrors, on a smaller scale, the corporate treasury model popularised by bitcoin-focused firms, but applied to ether. The company has steadily built its position over recent months, and its holdings now represent a substantial share of circulating ETH supply, a concentration that market analysts have flagged as worth monitoring given the potential for large treasury holders to influence liquidity and price discovery during periods of stress.
The latest purchase arrives against a backdrop of broader softness across major tokens, with bitcoin, XRP, Solana and other large-cap assets all posting declines of between 2% and 3% on the day the purchase was disclosed. That backdrop underscores the contrarian nature of BitMine’s continued buying, which Lee has repeatedly justified by pointing to structural demand drivers for Ethereum, including layer-2 expansion, rather than short-term price momentum.
Read more: Bitmine’s ether treasury nears 5% of total ETH supply as holdings hit $11.3bn
