The largest corporate holder of Ethereum has reduced its weekly accumulation pace, adding only 7,430 tokens over the past seven days.

This sharp reduction from its previous purchases came as the firm redirected capital toward a major share buyback.

Bitmine Makes Small ETH Purchase

As reported over the past several weeks, the Tom Lee-chaired company accumulated over 42,000 ETH at the start of the month and another 30,500 tokens in the following seven days, while remaining on track to hold 5% of the asset’s total supply. Now, though, the firm has made a dramatically smaller purchase of 7,430 ETH as it requires more capital to repurchase its own shares.

Despite this 76% decline in the accumulation pace from the previous week, Bitmine Immersion Technologies has still increased its total stash to 5,777,468 ETH as of July 19, valued at $10.85 billion at prices of around $1,880 per token. The position represents approximately 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. As such, the firm remains close to its long-term objective of controlling 5% of the asset.

Chairman Tom Lee still believes the company will continue to purchase ETH every week as it has done since it began its treasury strategy just over a year ago. He also emphasized that the reduced buying is not necessarily a result of declining confidence in the asset.

The company allocated substantial capital to repurchase approximately 5.5 million shares of its own common stock at an average price of just over $15.6. The transaction was executed under Bitmine’s previously authorized $4 billion share repurchase program.

Lee described the move as accretive to shareholder value, suggesting that management considered the company’s stock attractive enough to compete with Ethereum for capital allocation during the weekend.

Strategy on the Sidelines

The smaller ETH purchase from Bitmine shows a worrying trend among the entire crypto market. Most other treasury firms accumulating digital assets have remained on the sidelines in the past several months, and the largest of the bunch recently joined them.

After making numerous consecutive weekly purchases, Saylor’s Strategy halted its BTC accumulation a few weeks ago. It even announced two bitcoin sales. Although it has stopped selling, at least for the moment, Strategy is now focused on rebuilding its USD reserve, while the BTC stash remains aside.

Source: CryptoPotato