Ethereum News: Bitmine Adds $136 Million in ETH, Funded by New Preferred Stock — And Tom Lee Says Staking Solves Strategy's Dividend Problem

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the largest Ethereum-focused treasury company, continued its accumulation streak this week, acquiring 76,881 ETH worth approximately $136 million at current prices. The purchase lifts Bitmine's total Ethereum treasury to 5.62 million tokens — and arrives funded by a financing mechanism that directly borrows from, and explicitly tries to improve upon, the model pioneered by Michael Saylor's Strategy. The numbers: $10.4 billion in total holdings Beyond its 5.62 million ETH position, Bitmine holds 204 Bitcoin, $502 million in cash and marketable securities, and equity stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings — bringing total crypto, cash, and investment holdings to $10.4 billion. This week's purchase was smaller than the prior week's 126,971 ETH acquisition — which had been Bitmine's largest weekly haul of 2026, made as ETH fell to $1,500, its weakest level since April 2025. The smaller size this week is consistent with Lee's comments last month about potentially slowing purchases as Bitmine approaches its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum's total supply. Still, continued buying at any pace signals ongoing commitment to the accumulation strategy. "We are maintaining a somewhat elevated pace of buying as we believe this pullback in ETH prices does not reflect the strengthening of Ethereum fundamentals," Chairman Thomas Lee said — language that closely echoes his comments from the prior week's larger purchase, made while Bitmine was sitting on an estimated $9.6 billion in paper losses on its ETH position at the time. The financing: $274 million preferred stock at 9.5% The purchase was funded by proceeds from a new preferred equity offering — $274 million raised through 9.50% Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, which begins trading on the NYSE under the ticker BMNP on Tuesday and pays weekly cash dividends. This financing structure directly mirrors the approach Strategy pioneered and has increasingly relied upon — including Strategy's own STRC perpetual preferred stock, which shareholders just approved for semi-monthly (rather than monthly) dividend payments starting with a June 30 record date. The parallel is explicit: both companies are using preferred equity with high fixed dividend rates to raise capital for crypto accumulation without diluting common shareholders as directly as issuing new common stock would, and without selling existing crypto holdings. Tom Lee's pitch: staking solves the problem that's pressuring Strategy The most significant element of this announcement is Lee's explicit positioning of Bitmine's model as an improvement on Strategy's — directly addressing the structural tension that Marex's Ilan Solot described just days ago as Strategy's "capital waterfall" problem, where "every move protects one stakeholder by torching another." Strategy's preferred equity model has come under scrutiny as investors question how the company will fund its growing dividend commitments — a concern that became acute when Strategy's 32 BTC sale to fund STRC dividends triggered a market-wide selloff, despite the sale being immaterial relative to Strategy's 845,000+ BTC treasury. Lee argues Bitmine's structure avoids this problem at its root. "The company's current projected annualized staking rewards of approximately $219 million provide recurring cash flow to support the dividends related to the Series A Preferred shares," Lee said, describing the preferred stock as offering "good balance sheet diversification." Why staking changes the calculus The distinction Lee is drawing gets at a fundamental structural difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum as treasury assets. Bitcoin generates no yield — a Bitcoin treasury company's only sources of cash to fund dividend obligations are selling Bitcoin, selling new equity or debt, or other business operations. This is precisely the dynamic that forced Strategy's hand on its 32 BTC sale and that Solot described as an inescapable "capital waterfall" where every funding option damages some stakeholder group. Ethereum, by contrast, is a proof-of-stake asset that generates yield through staking. Bitmine's 5.62 million ETH position, if staked, would generate approximately $219 million annually in staking rewards according to the company's projections — providing a recurring cash flow stream that exists independent of ETH's price and independent of any need to sell the underlying asset or issue additional dilutive securities. If Bitmine's $219 million in projected annual staking rewards comfortably covers the dividend obligations on its $274 million preferred offering at a 9.5% rate (which would require approximately $26 million annually), the company would have substantial cushion — a structural advantage that Strategy's Bitcoin-based model simply cannot replicate without external capital raises. The broader pattern: Ethereum treasury companies adopting Bitcoin treasury financing tools, with a key modification Bitmine's move represents a notable evolution in the corporate crypto treasury landscape. The preferred equity financing tool that Strategy pioneered is being adopted by its largest Ethereum-focused counterpart — but with an explicit structural modification (staking-derived cash flow) designed to address the exact vulnerability that has caused Strategy's preferred equity model to face investor scrutiny. This development also reinforces the broader thesis, raised by Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick among others, that Ethereum's staking capability gives ETH treasury companies a structural advantage over Bitcoin treasury companies in the current environment — a thesis that gains additional concrete support from Bitmine's explicit framing of its preferred stock dividend coverage in terms of staking rewards specifically. With Ethereum trading near $1,723 following Monday's broad crypto rally on the confirmed US-Iran deal — and the CoinDesk 20 posting an all-green session led by AI-adjacent tokens — Bitmine's continued accumulation, even at a reduced pace, signals that the largest dedicated ETH treasury vehicle remains committed to its strategy through both the depths of ETH's recent decline to $1,500 and the early stages of what Standard Chartered has now termed "crypto Spring."