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The Ethereum Foundation has sold a portion of its holdings to Tom Lee’s BitMine Immersion Technologies, the second example of a publicly traded company acquiring ETH directly from the protocol’s main manager.
In a post on X, the Ethereum Foundation said it had sold 5,000 Ethereum to BitMine Immersion Technologies at an average price of $2,042.96 per token, for a total of just over $10.2 million.
On-chain transactions were made through the EF Safe multisig wallet controlled by the Ethereum Foundation.
“This sale will fund (the Ethereum Foundation’s) core operations and activities, including protocol R&D, ecosystem development, community grant funding, and more,” EF wrote, adding that it is part of its “ongoing treasury management activities.”
BitMine, chaired by Tom Lee of Fundstrat Global Advisors, is the largest Ethereum holding company in the world, holding more than 4.5 million ETH with a value of $9.3 billion. The company has been rapidly accumulating Ethereum since the middle of 2025, following a strategy inspired by the popular book Bitcoin Accumulation Strategy.
 
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This is the second time that the Ethereum Foundation has sold part of its assets to an Ethereum treasury company. Last July, it sold 10,000 Ethereum — worth about $26 million at the time — to iGaming giant Sharplink, which is now the second largest ETH fund with about $1.75 billion in assets. It is worth noting that using the OTC approach allows sales to bypass the pressure of public exchange sales.
Saturday’s announcement follows the foundation’s recent move to contribute to its fund, planning to allocate around 70,000 Ethereum to validators through Bitwise Onchain Solutions’ open-source infrastructure.
Meanwhile, data from CoinGecko shows that Ethereum has seen a sharp decline in recent months, along with most major cryptocurrencies, dropping 57.1% from a peak of US$4,946 in August 2025. As a result, BitMine and other Ethereum cryptocurrencies that started accumulating ETH near last year’s highs are facing huge paper losses. Based on SEC filings and estimated purchases since November, BitMine’s unrealized loss is about $7.5 billion.
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