Key takeaways
BitMine says it holds 4.11 million ETH, around 3.41% of the supply.
A large balance can affect market dynamics, but staking drives real influence.
What matters is how much gets staked and who runs the validators.
Firms are stockpiling ETH for staking yield and stablecoin settlement demand.
A single public company, BitMine, says it holds 4.11 million Ether (ETH), roughly 3.41% of Ether’s 120.7 million ETH supply.
That scale is large enough to affect liquidity conditions, influence market expectations and raise questions about decentralization.
But the key nuance is that owning ETH is not the same as controlling Ethereum. Control, to the extent it exists, is tied more closely to how much ETH is staked and how validators are run. BitMine reports that about 408,627 ETH is staked so far.
On top of that, Ethereum’s major upgrades are not decided by tokenholder voting in the way many people assume.
In this article, we examine how BitMine’s ETH holdings compare with the broader Ethereum ecosystem, why ownership is often mistaken for control and where real influence sits in a proof-of-stake (PoS) network.
What BitMine’s 3.4% figure is based on
BitMine’s headline number comes from a specific snapshot. As of Dec. 28, 2025, at 6:00 pm ET, the company said its crypto holdings included 4,110,525 ETH, using a reference price of $2,948 per ETH.
In the same disclosure, it also listed 192 Bitcoin (BTC), a $23-million stake in Eightco Holdings (Nasdaq: ORBS) and $1 billion in cash. Total crypto and cash holdings were framed at $13.2 billion.
This is a point-in-time disclosure, and Ether’s supply is not fixed, so the percentage can drift even if holdings remain the same.
Did you know? The “over 3.4% of ETH supply” claim is BitMine’s own calculation: 4,110,525 ETH as 3.41% of an ETH supply of 120.7 million.
ETH ownership vs. ETH staking: Two different kinds of “power”
A large ETH balance can matter for markets, but Ethereum’s consensus is secured by who is staking ETH and running validators.
To participate directly as a validator, you deposit 32 ETH into Ethereum’s deposit contract and run a validator setup using execution, consensus and validator software.
That staked ETH becomes part of the network’s security budget. Validators propose and attest to blocks and can be penalized or slashed for misbehavior.
That is why “BitMine owns around 3.4% of supply” and “BitMine can influence consensus” are not the same statement. Consensus influence scales with staked share, not total holdings. For context, Ethereum currently has roughly 35.6 million ETH staked, about 29% of the supply, and around 975,000 active validators.
Did you know? If a large holder stakes through a few major providers instead of operating independently, risk shifts from the holder itself to the infrastructure and service providers it depends on.
Can BitMine “control” Ethereum?
Even if a company owns a large amount of ETH, it cannot unilaterally change Ethereum’s rules. Protocol changes are coordinated through an offchain governance process, including research, Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), client teams and community coordination, not tokenholder voting.
Where a large actor can gain leverage is through staking because stake weight influences consensus outcomes. The commonly cited rule-of-thumb thresholds are as follows:
At roughly 33% of staked ETH, an attacker may be able to disrupt finality by preventing the chain from finalizing normally.
At ~51% of staked ETH, an attacker can influence fork choice, enabling transaction censorship and some reorg or maximal extractable value advantages.
Higher shares increase the feasibility of more severe consensus attacks, including finality reversion, though Ethereum’s own security discussions emphasize the role of the social layer in responding to such events.
Again, this is why it is more important to ask how much an entity stakes rather than focusing on how much ETH it owns.
Where 3.4% can matter immediately: Market structure and liquidity
Even if BitMine never stakes another coin, a treasury of 4,110,525 ETH concentrated on one balance sheet can still affect Ether’s market.
If a large portion is held long term, that can reduce the effective “free float,” meaning fewer coins are sitting on venues ready to trade. This can contribute to sharper price moves during periods of elevated demand or market stress.
How BitMine trades also warrants attention. Large buys or sells executed through over-the-counter (OTC) desks can reduce visible order book impact and slippage compared with pushing the same size through public exchanges.
If any portion of the treasury is used as collateral, directly or indirectly, rehypothecation and leverage can act as risk amplifiers in stressed conditions. In periods of stress, this can trigger forced selling and feed volatility rather than dampen it.
Staking concentration and “operator risk”
There is another risk worth considering. If BitMine’s ETH is gradually moved from being held to being staked, the decentralization question shifts toward how those validators are operated.
BitMine says it currently has 408,627 ETH staked and is working with three staking providers while preparing to launch its Made in America Validator Network (MAVAN) in Q1 2026.
This matters because Ether staking is already shaped by a handful of large operators. Lido remains the largest single staking cohort in many dashboards and industry reports.
If a major corporate holder stakes through a small set of providers, risks can concentrate in areas most readers do not see, including custody and key management, validator infrastructure and policy choices around relays and censorship.
Running validators in-house can diversify operator risk, but it also raises the bar for operational security and transparency.
Why firms are stockpiling ETH in 2025-2026
BitMine is not the only company stockpiling ETH. It has proven to be a productive treasury asset across the board.
As discussed earlier, unlike “pure hold” assets, ETH can generate returns through staking rewards when it is used to secure the network. That comes with real operational risks, including downtime penalties and, in extreme cases, slashing.
Ethereum is also the dominant stablecoin settlement environment. Data aggregators track Ethereum as holding a majority share of stablecoin supply, which is important for payments, exchanges and tokenized finance built around stablecoins.
This combination is exactly what is driving ETH’s appearance on corporate balance sheets in 2025-2026.