Top Ethereum treasury company Bitmine said Monday its Ether holdings had reached 5.78 million tokens, representing about 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply, as the company closed in on its stated goal of accumulating 5% of all ETH.
According to Monday’s announcement, the company added 7,430 ETH (ETH) over the past week. About 4.9 million ETH, or roughly 85% of its treasury, is currently staked through its validator network and partners.
Bitmine valued its crypto, cash and marketable securities at $11.5 billion, including 207 Bitcoin and $385 million in cash and securities. The company also repurchased 5.5 million shares during the week under its previously authorized $4 billion buyback program.
Earlier this month, BitMine said its institutional staking platform, MAVAN, generated $45.7 million in staking and validation revenue during the three-month period ended May 31, accounting for 98% of the company’s total revenue.
BitMine shares were up more than 6% in Monday afternoon trading, bringing their one-month gain to around 3.3%.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Related: Bitmine announces $74M Ether buys as chair says ‘greater chances of Clarity Act passage’
Ethereum gains momentum, Strategy builds cash
The announcement comes after the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder Strategy paused Bitcoin (BTC) purchases for a second straight week, instead raising capital through stock sales and growing its cash reserve to more than $3.2 billion.
Ethereum (ETH) has also outperformed Bitcoin over both the past week and month. It has gained about 6.7% over the past seven days and 10% over the past month, compared with gains of roughly 5.8% and 2.6%, respectively, for Bitcoin (BTC), according to CoinGecko data at the time of writing.
Source: CoinGecko
Robinhood Chain fuels optimism around Ethereum
Earlier this month, Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network built on Arbitrum for tokenized stocks.
During its first two weeks, the blockchain attracted more than $141 million in bridged Ether and reignited debate over whether institutional adoption of Ethereum’s scaling networks ultimately drives demand for ETH.
Max Shannon, senior research analyst at Bitwise, told Cointelegraph Robinhood Chain reflects the “growth of the Ethereum ecosystem,” particularly among traditional financial institutions.
Whether that institutional growth ultimately strengthens ETH remains an open question. ARK Invest’s Lorenzo Valente argued Robinhood Chain supports the bullish case for ETH as the ecosystem’s monetary asset, but weakens the investment thesis that Ethereum derives significant value from layer-2 fee revenue.
Bernstein analysts on Monday raised their price target on Robinhood, to $160 from $130 per share, based on their investment thesis that the online brokerage’s next phase of growth will be driven by tokenized equities and prediction markets rather than traditional crypto trading.
The firm highlighted Robinhood Chain as its proprietary infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, enabling the platform to build on-chain financial products without relying on third-party blockchains.
The price of ETH has climbed about 20% from roughly $1,582 on July 1, when the chain launched, to around $1,900 at the time of writing.
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