BitMine chairman Tom Lee thinks Ether is trading at a discount because future adoption of the blockchain by Wall Street and AI companies will drive it higher.
Digital asset company Bit Digital plans to raise $100 million through a convertible senior note offering to grow its Ether treasury, while BitMine Immersion Technologies has extended its lead as the largest Ether treasury company.
Bit Digital said in a statement on Monday its also offering an option for an extra $15 million in notes, with all net proceeds earmarked for more Ether (ETH) purchases, plus general corporate purposes, “including potential investments, acquisitions and other business opportunities relating to digital assets.”
Bit Digital currently holds more than 120,000 Ether and is the seventh-largest Ether treasury company tracked by StrategicEtherReserve. If successful in its raise, the company could purchase another 23,714 tokens, which would bump it up the list to sixth, ahead of crypto exchange Coinbase.
Source: Bit DigitalBitMine extends its lead
At the same time, BitMine announced on Monday an expansion in its treasury holdings to 2.65 million Ether, worth over $11 billion, growing its lead against the second-largest company, SharpLink Gaming, which holds over 838,000 Ether.
StrategicEtherReserve lists Sept. 26 as BitMines latest purchase date, when it acquired 234,000 tokens as part of its long-term goal of holding 5% of the total supply.
BitMine estimates its average purchase price as $4,141 per Ether. The token is trading for $4,221, according to CoinGecko.
Ether purchased at a discount, Lee says
BitMine Chairman Tom Lee called ETHs current price “a discount to the future” with two supercycles forming in the final months of 2025 — crypto and artificial intelligence — which both “require neutral public blockchains,” making Ethereum the “premier choice.”
“We continue to believe Ethereum is one of the biggest macro trades over the next 10-15 years,” Lee said.
“Wall Street and AI moving onto the blockchain should lead to a greater transformation of todays financial system. And the majority of this is taking place on Ethereum.”
Jan van Eck, the CEO of investment management firm VanEck, which offers an Ether-based exchange-traded fund (ETF), made similar comments in August, predicting financial services will adopt a blockchain to handle stablecoin transactions, and he believes Ethereum will be the platform of choice.
Ether held by institutions could push price
Institutions have been steadily acquiring Ether throughout 2025, with the total across treasury companies and ETFs sitting at over 11.8 million, representing just under 10% of the total token supply.
Related: ETHZilla unleashes fresh $350M war chest for Ethereum bets
In August, Etherealizes Vivek Raman told Cointelegraph the “healthy competition” between companies acquiring Ether could spark a DeFi Summer 2.0 “but on the institutional scale and bigger and better.”
Meanwhile, David Grider, a partner at Venture capital firm Finality Capital, predicted in an X post in July that the Ether treasury company “boom should bode well for ETH flows and price action similar to the impact MicroStrategy had on Bitcoin.”
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