Bitmine, Ethereum’s main treasury company, said Monday that its Ether holdings had reached 5.78 million tokens, representing about 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply, as the company moved closer to 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. Around 4.9 million ETH, or around 85% of its treasury, is currently staked through its network of validators and partners.
Bitmine valued its cryptocurrencies, cash and tradable 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 as part of its previously authorized $4 billion repurchase program.
Earlier this month, BitMine said its institutional staking platform, MAVAN, generated $45.7 million in staking and validation revenue during the three months ended May 31, accounting for 98% of the company’s total revenue.
BitMine shares rose more than 6% Monday afternoon, bringing their one-month gain to about 3.3%.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Related: Bitmine Announces $74M Ether Purchase as President Says ‘Greater Chances of Clarity Act Passage’
Ethereum gains momentum, strategy generates liquidity
The announcement comes after the world’s largest Bitcoin holding company, Strategy, suspended its purchases of Bitcoin (BTC) for the second week in a row, instead raising capital through stock sales and increasing its cash reserve to more than $3.2 billion.
Ethereum (ETH) has also outperformed Bitcoin over the past week and month. It has gained about 6.7% over the past seven days and 10% over the past month, compared to gains of around 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, a layer 2 Ethereum network built on Arbitrum for tokenized stocks.
In 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 that Robinhood Chain reflects the “growth of the Ethereum ecosystem,” particularly among traditional financial institutions.
Whether this institutional growth will ultimately strengthen ETH remains an open question. Lorenzo Valente of ARK Invest argued that Robinhood Chain supports the bullish case for ETH as an ecosystem 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 stocks and prediction markets rather than traditional crypto trading.
The company introduced Robinhood Chain as its proprietary infrastructure for real-world tokenized assets, allowing the platform to create on-chain financial products without relying on third-party blockchains.
The price of ETH has climbed about 20%, from around $1,582 on July 1, when the chain launched, to around $1,900 at the time of writing.
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