Tom Lee Outlines Liquidity Catalyst for Ethereum Firm BitMine Following Russell Index Update

BitMine Immersion Technologies is expected to enter the Russell 1000 Index, joining the index that tracks the largest public companies in the U.S. and serves as an industry-standard benchmark for equity exposure across institutional portfolios.

The inclusion, which is slated to finalize after the closing bell on June 26, comes as part of FTSE Russell’s semi-annual reconstitution, reshuffling the market-capitalization boundaries between various groups of equities to reflect Wall Street’s changing landscape.

At $10.7 billion, BitMine’s market capitalization came in well above the $5.7 billion threshold for large-cap inclusion, Chairman Tom Lee said in an X post on Saturday. He noted that “many active managers only buy equities on the Russell 1000.”

Passively managed index funds and exchange-traded funds that mirror Russell benchmarks typically hold 20% to 25% of a member company’s total market cap, Lee added, hinting at a massive, multi-billion dollar wave of forced buying that could soon drive demand.

The Ethereum-buying firm’s shares closed on Friday around $18.88, a 30% decrease year-to-date, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock has largely traded sideways since plunging as low as $17.19 in February, after soaring as high as $161 last year. (Disclosure: Lee is an investor in Dastan, the parent company of an editorially independent Decrypt.)

For BitMine, Russell 1000 inclusion could stoke inflows from investors who aren’t necessarily aware of the company’s mission to grow the amount of Ethereum that it owns per share and secure 5% of Ethereum’s total supply, a sum valued at roughly $12.8 billion on Monday.

The company currently controls 4.6 million Ethereum worth $10 billion, representing 3.8% of Ethereum’s total supply, according to Strategic Ethereum Reserve. The firm started accumulating Ethereum aggressively last July.

Ethereum changed hands around $2,100 on Monday, according to CoinGecko. The second-largest digital asset by market capitalization has slid 7.8% over the past month.

BitMine isn’t the only crypto firm that’s affected by the reconstitution: Ethereum treasury company SharpLink is slated to join the small-cap Russell 2000 Index alongside crypto exchange Gemini. Meanwhile, crypto financial services firm Galaxy Digital is expected to join the large-cap Russell 1000 Index.

Strategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, joined the Russell 1000 Index around two years ago. In January, MSCI signaled that it would allow companies like Strategy to remain in its flagship global equity indexes, while putting a controversial proposal on ice.

The move would have stripped index eligibility from public firms holding more than 50% of their total assets in digital currencies. But the decision ultimately averted what analysts estimated could have been billions of dollars in forced institutional selling.