On March 14, the Ethereum Foundation sold 5,000 ETH to BitMine Immersion Technologies for $10.2 million. The average price was $2,042.96 per ETH, roughly in line with where Ethereum was trading at the time. The transaction was executed over the counter, transferred from an EF Safe multisig wallet, and announced via a post on X. Straightforward on the surface. Less straightforward once you look at who bought it and what they paid.
BitMine, listed on NYSE American under the ticker BMNR and chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, is the world’s largest publicly traded ETH treasury company. It holds over 4.5 million ETH currently valued at roughly $9.3 billion. It has been accumulating Ethereum since mid-2025, modeling its strategy directly on MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin playbook. It bought this latest tranche at $2,042 per ETH. The average price it paid across its entire position is considerably higher. BitMine is sitting on billions in unrealized losses and just bought more from the organization that built the asset it is sitting underwater on.
That is the trade worth understanding.
Why the Ethereum Foundation Sells Its Own Asset
The EF is a Swiss non-profit. It was granted a large allocation of ETH at Ethereum’s genesis in 2015 and has used it to fund operations ever since. Protocol research, developer grants, ecosystem support, community programs — all of it costs money and all of it has historically been funded by periodically selling ETH.
In June 2025 the foundation published a formal treasury policy targeting 15% of its treasury as annual operating spend, with a 2.5-year runway buffer maintained at all times. The Defiant The policy was a response to years of criticism about opacity. The foundation committed to quarterly financial reports, a plan to reduce annual spending to a 5% baseline over five years, and a framework for when and how ETH would be sold.
The BitMine deal fits that framework. Under the policy the EF targets 15% of its treasury as annual operating spend with a 2.5-year runway buffer, and the OTC approach avoids the public exchange sell pressure that drew community backlash last September, when the EF announced plans to sell 10,000 ETH via centralized exchanges. SEC.gov The community pushed back and said use OTC. The EF listened. This is them listening.
The foundation still holds approximately 169,863 ETH worth roughly $354 million at current prices. It is not running out of runway. This is treasury management, not distress selling.
The Pattern Worth Noting
This is the second time in under a year the EF has sold ETH directly to a publicly traded corporate treasury buyer. In July 2025, the Ethereum Foundation sold 10,000 ETH over the counter to SharpLink Gaming, another ETH treasury firm, at an average price of $2,572.37 in a transaction worth $25.7 million. FinanceFeeds
Two OTC sales to two corporate ETH treasury companies in nine months. Both at below the buyers’ average acquisition prices. Both structured to avoid exchange-driven sell pressure. Both announced publicly and on-chain.
What the EF is building is a quiet but consistent OTC sales channel with institutional buyers who want large ETH positions without moving the market. For the EF it means clean fiat funding without community backlash. For the buyers it means direct access to a large holder willing to transact at market prices. For the market it means supply is absorbed institutionally rather than dumped on retail.
That structure matters. OTC transactions have limited direct impact on market prices because they do not occur on public exchanges, though news about ETH sales can sometimes influence investor sentiment in the short term. CCN
The BitMine Question
Tom Lee is not a passive investor. He built Fundstrat’s reputation on early and contrarian calls. His thesis on Ethereum is essentially the same one Michael Saylor ran on Bitcoin: accumulate aggressively, hold through volatility, and wait for institutional adoption to justify the position.
The difference is that Saylor was buying Bitcoin before the ETF era. Lee is buying Ethereum after the ETF era has already started. BlackRock launched ETHB on March 12, the first staked Ethereum ETF in the US, distributing monthly yield to institutional investors. BitMine’s accumulation strategy exists in that context. A world where regulated, yield-bearing ETH products are available to institutional allocators is a world where the asset BitMine holds has a larger addressable buyer base than it did a year ago.
<p”>Whether that justifies the unrealized losses BitMine is currently carrying is a separate question. It bought heavily on the way up and is buying again on the way down. That is either conviction or commitment depending on where ETH goes from here.
What the EF Is Also Doing With Its ETH
Selling is only half the picture. The sale also comes weeks after the EF began staking a portion of its treasury, with plans to deploy roughly 70,000 ETH into validators using open-source infrastructure from Bitwise Onchain Solutions. SEC.gov
That is a meaningful shift. The organization that built proof-of-stake Ethereum is now actively staking its own treasury to earn network yield. It is not just selling ETH to fund operations. It is using ETH to generate returns that can reduce the need to sell. Staking 70,000 ETH at current yields generates roughly $7 million annually. That covers a meaningful portion of operating expenses without touching principal.
The full picture is an organization that is selling selectively via OTC to institutional buyers, staking a large portion of its remaining holdings, and publishing a transparent framework for both. That is not a foundation in distress. It is a foundation that spent years being criticized for financial opacity and finally built the infrastructure to operate transparently.
The Uncomfortable Part
None of that makes the EF’s position entirely comfortable. Ethereum has underperformed Bitcoin significantly since the 2024 halving. The ETH/BTC ratio has compressed. The layer-2 ecosystem that Ethereum was supposed to benefit from has arguably cannibalized mainnet fee revenue instead. Aave founder Stani Kulechov publicly suggested earlier this year that the foundation should make structural adjustments to reduce the need for frequent token sales.
The EF is selling ETH at $2,042 that it received at genesis over a decade ago. The cost basis is effectively zero. But it is selling into a market where its asset has lost ground against Bitcoin, where its most vocal critics are questioning its operational efficiency, and where the institutional narrative around Ethereum is only now starting to recover with ETHB.
The treasury sales are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of an organization managing a complex financial position in public, which is harder than it sounds. The relevant question is not whether the EF should sell. It is whether the proceeds are being deployed into the research and infrastructure that justifies Ethereum’s position as the second largest blockchain by market cap.
That answer will not be visible in a single OTC transaction. It will be visible in whether Ethereum’s developer ecosystem, layer-2 activity, and institutional adoption continue to grow over the next two years. The EF is betting they will. BitMine, sitting on billions in unrealized losses, is betting the same thing.
