BitMine raising $250 million for ethereum treasury

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin mining firm that has a bitcoin treasury strategy, is adding ethereum into its mix. 

On Monday, the firm announced a private placement for the purchase and sale of common stock worth about $250 million to implement an ethereum treasury strategy, according to an SEC filing, sending the stock up. 

“Growth of the treasury is going to be all ethereum,” BitMine CEO Jonathan Bates told Sherwood News. 

As part of its new strategy, BitMine is also looking to expand its operations to include staking.

“It’s exciting to me… the staking mechanism of it helps pay for itself. You also stack more ethereum through your own actions and just owning it,” Bates said. BitMine’s staking infrastructure will probably be a combination of running its own in-house validating operations as well as collaborating with liquid staking providers, like Lido and Rocket Pool, Bates added. 

Thomas Lee, the founder and chief investment officer of Fundstrat Capital and who is now the chairman of BitMine’s board of directors, said to Sherwood the decision to pursue an ethereum treasury strategy stems from the vision that stablecoins will be the primary driver of growth for the blockchain network.

Lee and Bates both cited Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that stablecoins could reach a $2 trillion market cap.

Lee said that the recent Circle IPO provides a framework to evaluate ethereum. Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, has an enterprise value of about $40 billion, while its EBITDA next year stands at $488 million, Lee said, referencing Bloomberg Consensus data. 

“There’s a lot of interest in crypto equities, but then Circle, if it’s trading at 100x EBITDA, maybe that tells you that the underlying blockchain is undervalued,” Lee told Sherwood. Nearly 63% of USDC sits atop ethereum. “I think that gives you some perspective of how you have to look at Circle and what it implies for the underlying blockchain.” 

The price of ethereum has remained flat in the past 24 hours at the $2,480 level, about 50% away from its all-time high of $4,878 in November 2021. Ethereum’s price languishing is “understandable to an extent… If you just look at performance metrics, ethereum usage has been lagging,” Lee said. 

However, Lee and Bates are optimistic about the network’s activity, with Lee highlighting the network’s most recent upgrade in making ethereum more friendly to develop projects as well as the increase in stablecoin usage on ethereum. 

“Fees generated are going to go up commensurate with the growth of stables, so ultimately that will be reflected in the price,” Bates said. “We think it’s pent up for a pretty nice setup.” 

Rival cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Solana have hit record prices this year, but “you don’t want to buy the stock that’s already gone up. You want to buy the stock that hasn’t gone up yet. That same mentality applies here,” Bates argued. 

BitMine joins SharpLink Gaming in adopting an ethereum treasury strategy, which raised $425 million in May through a private investment in public equity offering. It also named Joseph Lubin, CEO of Consensys and cofounder of ethereum, as the chairman of its board of directors.