Tom Lee’s Bitmine continues to bolster its Ethereum (ETH) reserves, accumulating as much as 101,745 ETH over the past week, pushing its total holdings to 5.18 million. As a result, speculations about a potential ETH supply shock have been increasing.
Bitmine unfazed by recent ETH price action
Despite ETH’s less than ideal price performance since the beginning of the year, institutional interest in the cryptocurrency doesn’t appear to be dwindling. Over the past week, Bitmine scooped up 101,745 ETH, further extending its lead as the largest corporate holder of the coin.
According to data from Coingecko, Bitmine now holds more than 5 million ETH, worth a total of $11.9 billion as per current market prices. Notably, the firm holds 4.2 percent of ETH’s total circulating supply, steadily inching closer to its target of accumulating 5 percent of the supply.
Following Bitmine, SharpLink Gaming currently holds 868,699 ETH on its balance sheet, while other firms like The Ether Machine, Coinbase Global, and Bit Digital round up the top five corporate ETH holders.
It is worth highlighting that there’s only one non-US-based company in this list of top ten ETH holders – Yueda Digital Holdings from the Cayman Islands. Collectively, the top ten holders of ETH hold approximately 5.7 percent of the digital asset’s total available supply.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor’s Strategy recently shared that they did not buy any Bitcoin (BTC) over the past week, reflecting that the optimism toward risk-on assets like cryptocurrencies may not be universally shared in current market conditions.
Will ETH see supply scarcity?
Since almost 6 percent of the total circulating ETH supply now resides in public companies’ balance sheets, speculations about a potential supply scarcity-driven price surge are taking momentum once again.
It was not too long ago that Bitmine had staked $320 million worth of ETH, essentially deploying more than 70 percent of their holdings to secure the Ethereum network through Coinbase Prime.
Latest data shows that more than 38.6 million ETH is currently staked on the Ethereum network, representing close to 31.6 percent of the cryptocurrency’s total supply. As an increasing amount of ETH gets out of circulating supply, expect the digital asset’s price to make steady gains.
While rising institutional interest and staking proportion might be good news for ETH bulls, it would be wise not to get too excited. Recent technical analysis suggests that ETH may be preparing for another dip before making any meaningful gains in the short term.
