BitMine invests US$ 76 million in Ethereum as analysts forecast better performance of ETH compared to Bitcoin

Source: PortaldoBitcoin Original Title: Tom Lee’s BitMine purchases $76 million in Ethereum while analysts predict ETH will outperform Bitcoin Original Link: The leading publicly traded Ethereum treasury company, BitMine Immersion Technologies, added 24,266 ETH — valued at approximately US$ 76 million — to its holdings last week.

The most recent acquisition raises the company’s Ethereum treasury to over 4.16 million ETH, worth approximately US$ 13 billion, making it the largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall, behind only Strategy (’s Bitcoin holdings valued at around US$ 63 billion). BitMine now holds about 3.5% of the entire circulating supply of Ethereum.

“2026 heralds many positive things for crypto, with stablecoin adoption and tokenization driving blockchain to become Wall Street’s settlement layer, particularly favoring Ethereum,” said BitMine President Tom Lee in a statement.

“We continue to see the leverage reset after October 10 as something akin to a ‘mini crypto winter.’ 2026 is the year crypto prices recover, with even stronger gains in 2027–2028,” he continued, referring to the record liquidation in October that wiped out US$ 19 billion in positions in a single day.

Lee and BitMine remain strongly committed to Ethereum, putting their “money where their mouth is,” amid Lee’s call for a “100x ETH supercycle” and a future price target of US$ 250,000 per ETH.

The company’s confidence in the second-largest asset by market capitalization is supported by a new research note published Monday by banking giant Standard Chartered, highlighting BitMine’s ongoing purchases as a catalyst for ETH’s outperformance relative to Bitcoin moving forward.

Reasons for optimism about Ethereum

“We see several drivers for ETH’s superior performance,” wrote Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick. “While all digital assets have seen slower inflows via ETFs and corporate digital asset treasury DATS, BitMine’s continuous purchases — the largest ETH DATS — give ETH a relative advantage.”

Like Lee, Kendrick also points to stablecoin adoption and real-world asset tokenization as key trends that will support ETH in the future and ultimately reduce the ETH-BTC ratio.

The global bank revised downward its short-term price targets for ETH based on weakened crypto market performance, now suggesting a price of US$ 7,500 in 2026 — which would still be a historic peak for ETH — compared to previous projections of US$ 12,000.

However, along with the short-term revisions, Standard Chartered raised its long-term outlook, now forecasting prices of US$ 30,000 for ETH by 2029 and US$ 40,000 by 2030.

“In absolute terms, Bitcoin’s weaker-than-expected performance led us to downgrade our BTC forecasts and delay our final projection of US$ 500,000 for 2030,” Kendrick wrote.

“Given Bitcoin’s dominance in the digital asset space, we also downgraded our ETH-USD forecasts for the coming years,” he added. “In relative terms, however, we believe the prospects for Ethereum have become more positive.”

ETH would need to rise nearly 1,200% to reach Standard Chartered’s US$ 40,000 target, based on Monday’s trading price. The asset has been nearly flat over the past 24 hours, recently trading at US$ 3,132. It remains about 37% below its 2025 all-time high of US$ 4,496.

BitMine (BMNR) shares recently traded up more than 3% on the day, at a price of US$ 31.04.