Tom Lee's Bitmine favors share buybacks to ether purchases as crypto declines

Bitmine Immersion Technologies BMNR$21.57 resumed share repurchases after a roughly 10-week pause, while adding ether ETH$2,490.55 as Chairman Tom Lee said he sees an opportunity in the recent crypto selloff.

The Ethereum treasury firm bought 2.04 million shares last week at an average price of $22.48, spending about $45.9 million. It was Bitmine's first buyback since Aug. 17, when the company wrapped up a five-week stretch of repurchases totaling roughly 21 million shares for $350 million.

The latest purchases bring Bitmine's total buybacks this year to 22.9 million shares, worth nearly $400 million. The company said it plans to keep buying back stock when management believes its shares are undervalued.

The shift comes as Lee argues that crypto has held up better than AI-related stocks during the recent market downturn, which he blamed on investors pulling back from riskier assets

Crypto got pulled down by the same “'risk off' forces behind the AI sell-off," Lee said in a Monday statement. “ETH has fallen 13% from its recent peak while US semiconductors ($SOXX) is down 20% in that same timeframe. We believe this is further evidence that a crypto bull market is underway.”

The comparison follows weeks of pressure on AI-related stocks amid concerns about spending on data centers and the returns those investments might bring. Lee pointed to crypto’s smaller decline as a sign of strength, though it doesn’t rule out further losses.

Bitmine keeps buying ETH, but slowing

Alongside the share buybacks, Bitmine picked up another 10,452 ETH worth roughly $24.5 million, slowing from 12,535 ETH the previous week.

That brought its holdings to 6,051,933 ETH, or about 4.95% of Ethereum's 122.2 million token supply. The company is now roughly 58,000 ETH short of its goal of owning 5% of all ether.

The two purchases show how Bitmine is splitting its capital between adding more ETH and buying back its own stock, favoring the latter as the company nears its accumulation target.

Bitmine has also staked about 5.23 million ETH, or 86% of its holdings, and projects roughly $318 million in annualized staking revenue at current yields.