Bitmine Immersion Technologies bought another 12,532 ETH last week, lifting its holdings to 6,028,946 ETH — roughly 4.9% of ether's 122.1 million token supply — as chairman Tom Lee said he expects an inherited-wealth transfer of up to $2 trillion between 2026 and 2028 to fuel demand for digital assets.

The latest purchase, worth about $32 million at Monday's price, values Bitmine's ether treasury at roughly $15.3 billion. The firm sits about 76,000 ETH short of its stated goal of controlling 5% of ether's circulating supply. At last week's pace, it could cross that threshold in roughly six weeks.

Lee, a Wall Street veteran who co-founded Fundstrat in 2014 and serves as its chief investment officer, said the company will stop accumulating ETH once it reaches the 5% mark.

What is driving Lee's bull case?

Lee pointed to estimates from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and Fundstrat suggesting between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in wealth could change hands from 2026 through 2028.

"The wealth transfer underway is expected to support the upcoming crypto bull market as those inheriting wealth are younger and likely have a higher risk appetite for crypto and equities," Lee said in a Monday statement.

His argument rests on demographics. Younger heirs, Lee contends, will allocate a larger share of inherited capital to digital assets than previous generations did. How much of that wealth will actually reach crypto markets remains unclear.

Lee's comments echo Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, who told CNBC's Jim Cramer last month that more than $100 trillion in wealth is set to pass from older to younger generations over the coming decades.

Beyond inheritance flows, Lee cited two additional structural drivers:

• Wall Street's growing use of blockchain rails to represent financial assets
• The rise of AI applications alongside crypto treasury companies holding tokens for the long term

How close is Bitmine to its target?

Bitmine has bought ETH every week since pivoting to an ether-focused treasury strategy in June 2025, according to the company. The firm has staked about 5.07 million ETH — 84% of its holdings — and projects roughly $336 million in annualized staking revenue at current yields.

The 5% ceiling matters for market structure. Once Bitmine stops buying, one of the largest continuous accumulation programs in the ether market will switch off, removing a persistent weekly bid from the order books and shifting the company's economics toward staking income.

Reaching the target would also concentrate roughly one in twenty ether tokens under a single corporate treasury — an unprecedented concentration for a major public blockchain asset, and a variable institutional investors will need to price in.

For now, the clock runs on accumulation. If Bitmine sustains its recent purchase pace, the 5% threshold — and the end of its buying program — arrives in roughly six weeks.