As the crypto market starts to warm up, institutional whales are hoarding coins at an astonishing rate. Bitmine Immersion Technologies announced that its ETH holdings have surged to 5.62 million coins, worth $9.66 billion, accounting for 4.66% of the total circulating supply of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency.

The latest data shows that Bitmine has picked up 76,881 ETH over the past week. After the latest round of accumulation, the company is now 95% towards its ultimate goal of controlling 5% of the total ETH supply.

Bitmine's chairman, Tom Lee, a well-known Wall Street analyst, stated that the company is maintaining a high-intensity buying pace and pointed out that the recent price pullback of ETH does not reflect the increasingly robust fundamentals of the Ethereum network. He said:

Considering we're in the budding phase of the 'Crypto Spring', it's not surprising.

According to CoinGecko data, Ethereum is currently trading at about $1,779, up 3.7% in the last 24 hours, but still down about 64.3% from the all-time high of $4,946 set last August, indicating that the market still has a ways to go before a full recovery.

Annual staking yields are projected at $269 million.

Besides holding a bag full of Ethereum, Bitmine also owns 204 BTC, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, a $93 million stake in Eightco Holdings, and $446 million in cash.

Meanwhile, Bitmine is actively deploying assets into staking, with 4.71 million ETH currently staked, accounting for about 83% of their holdings, generating approximately $219 million in annual staking rewards; if they deploy all their holdings to their own validation platform MAVAN for staking, the annual yield could potentially increase to around $269 million.

"Bitmine increases its Ethereum holdings by 76,000! Tom Lee is bullish on the initial bloom of 'Crypto Spring'"—this article was first published on Block客.