Bitmine buys $131M of ether in biggest purchase since June

Bitmine bought 53,501 ETH in its largest ether purchase since June. The purchase was worth about $131.3 million at Monday's ether price of $2,455. Bitmine made the purchase for the second consecutive week. Bitmine bought 32,447 ETH the previous week. The latest purchase lifted Bitmine's holdings to 5,901,112 ETH. The holdings are worth roughly $14.5 billion at current prices. Bitmine now owns about 4.9% of Ethereum's 120.7 million token supply. The 5% ownership threshold is roughly 6.04 million ETH at the current supply level. Bitmine is about 134,000 ETH short of that threshold. Bitmine's weekly purchases fell below 10,000 ETH several times in July and August as the company approached its 5% goal. Ether rallied 55% so far in August. Bitcoin advanced 34% during the same period. Chairman Tom Lee said ether outperformed the S&P 500 this quarter. Lee said the outperformance could draw more institutional demand. Lee said the performance could encourage institutions to add to their crypto holdings because crypto substantially outperformed other macro assets in the third quarter so far.