October’s historic crypto market crash forced a reckoning across leveraged trading, sent prices tumbling, and set the stage for audacious institutional dip-buying. Among the biggest actors was Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion Technologies. The behemoth Ethereum treasury company rapidly expanded its already massive ETH coffers by acquiring 128,718 more ETH (worth about $480 million) immediately after the sharp sell-off.
These transfers were corroborated by blockchain explorers and were part of a pattern of large withdrawals and positioning by institutional whale accounts through the crash window.
Bitmine is led by Fundstrat Capital CIO Tom Lee and had previously accumulated over 2.83 million ETH. With the latest haul, their holdings jumped to roughly 2.96 million ETH, nearly 2.5% of the entire Ethereum supply; by far the largest ETH treasury of any public company, second only to MicroStrategy in crypto overall.
The buying spree unfolded just after President Trump’s surprise 100% tariff announcement on Chinese software imports, alongside strict controls on U.S. rare earth mineral exports.
“Institutions are not scared to buy Ethereum.”
Their treasury strategy is built for scale. Bitmine remains committed to aggressive “buy-the-dip” maneuvers through moments of heightened volatility. Recent buys also facilitate staking, with Bitmine using validator nodes and liquidity protocols to earn annual yields on top of price exposure.
As leveraged sellers were washed out, Bitmine and similar buyers repositioned for long-term gains, potentially supporting price stability as lower volatility returns post-crash.
