Bitmine Keeps Buying Ether — But the Bigger Move This Week Was Its Own Stock

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the NYSE-listed firm chaired by Fundstrat's Tom Lee, extended its weekly ether-buying streak last week, adding 10,452 ETH worth roughly $24 million, according to Decrypt. But the firm's larger move was a turn toward buying back its own stock — a program it describes as the biggest equity repurchase any crypto treasury company has run.

In a Monday statement reported by Decrypt, Bitmine said it repurchased 2.04 million of its own shares over the prior week at an average price of $22.48 — a weekly outlay of about $45.9 million on that math — lifting its 2026 running total to 22.9 million shares bought back. The full dollar figure for the year's repurchases wasn't completely stated in the figures available.

The pivot is notable because Bitmine's entire pitch has been accumulating ether on its balance sheet, MicroStrategy-style. Spending tens of millions buying back equity is a different use of cash than buying more ETH.

Key facts

• ETH added last week: 10,452 ETH, roughly $24 million (Decrypt, citing Bitmine).
• Shares repurchased last week: 2.04 million at an average $22.48 — about $45.9 million by that arithmetic (Decrypt).
• 2026 buyback total: 22.9 million shares; full-year dollar total not fully specified (Decrypt).
• Company claim: the largest equity repurchase program run by any crypto treasury firm — Bitmine's own characterization (Decrypt).
• Timing: statement made Monday, Oct. 26, 2026 (Decrypt).

The real-world read

The "largest buyback by any crypto treasury firm" line is Bitmine's own claim, not an independently verified ranking — treat it as a company superlative until someone checks the field.

Bitmine didn't say why it is redirecting cash into its own shares. Worth watching: crypto treasury firms typically buy back stock when their shares trade below the value of the crypto they hold — a discount to net asset value. If that's the case here, the buyback is less a flex than a signal the market is valuing Bitmine's ETH stack at less than face. The figures at hand don't confirm that either way.

One more caveat on sourcing: this reached us through a single secondary report whose headline pointed at an entirely unrelated story — an Indian exchange's reported $16 million loss — a packaging mismatch that the text itself didn't support. The ETH and buyback numbers are specific and internally consistent, but the clean move is to confirm them against Bitmine's own disclosure before banking them. That filing isn't in hand.

Opinion, and whose

The only forward-looking claim on offer is Bitmine's own framing that its buyback leads the crypto-treasury pack (Decrypt, quoting the company). No independent analyst view accompanies the figures. Nothing here should be read as a judgment on the stock or on ETH.

Not financial advice. Cleartext takes no payment to cover anything and reports only what the record supports.

Sources

• Decrypt (Tom Lee's Bitmine item), Oct. 26, 2026 — provided the 10,452 ETH purchase (~$24M), the 2.04 million-share weekly buyback at $22.48, the 22.9 million-share 2026 total, and the company's "largest buyback" claim. The same item ran under a headline about an unrelated CoinDCX loss its body did not support; that CoinDCX claim is not reported here as fact. Not marketing, but the buyback superlative originates with Bitmine, an interested party.