BitMine Immersion Technologies, a publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm, purchased $49 million worth of ETH last week, acquiring 27,801 tokens. The company now holds 5,770,038 ETH, representing nearly 4.8% of the circulating supply, valued at approximately $10.1 billion as Ethereum trades around $1,780 on Monday.
Tom Lee Highlights Robinhood Chain as Ethereum Catalyst
BitMine Chairman Tom Lee attributed the strong week for Ethereum to the successful launch of Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network built on Arbitrum that went live on July 1, 2026. Lee noted that dollar volumes on Robinhood Chain have already exceeded $1 billion, and its decentralized exchange (DEX) now has more trading volume than any other, demonstrating Ethereum's product-market fit. DEX volumes on Robinhood Chain surpassed $3 billion in the past week, though it still trails established networks like Ethereum ($7.27 billion) and Solana ($12.34 billion) over the same period.
Early Meme Coin Traders See Gains
Robinhood Chain has created small fortunes for some early meme coin traders, including one individual who turned $85 into over $2 million in paper gains. Lee emphasized that Robinhood's 27 million users are paying crypto fees denominated in ETH, suggesting everyday users are beginning to view ETH as money. However, data from Token Terminal shows only 788,000 active addresses on Robinhood Chain so far.
Despite the network activity, ETH has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours and gained only 1.3% over the past week. BitMine shares (BMNR) have underperformed, falling 5.7% in the last five trading days and trading around $14.65 on Monday, down 2.2% since the opening bell.