Crypto Currents: BitMine’s $20B ETH buy plan fuels rally

A massive planned ether purchase from Bitmine Immersion is fueling a major rally, while crypto exchange Bullish appears set for a successful IPO. Simultaneously, traditional finance giants continue to push deeper into asset tokenization, and a new report estimates President Trump’s crypto-related ventures have yielded over $2.4B since 2022. Stay up on the crypto news that matters with “Crypto Currents,” from The Fly. Join us 2 PM daily for your essential briefing on the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency on FlyCast radio. Also, subscribe to our YouTube channel for the Crypto Fly By weekly recap.

BITMINE’S MASSIVE ETH BET FUELS RALLY: Bitmine Immersion (BMNR) announced plans to expand its at-the-market stock offering by $20B to a new total of $24.5B of common stock, earmarking the funds for additional ether (ETH) purchases. The news sent ether’s price soaring ~10%, extending the token’s rally of ~70% year to date. This, in turn, caused the triggering of over $250M in short liquidations. This move would significantly increase BitMine’s already substantial holdings of 1.15M ETH, worth nearly $5B. The aggressive accumulation by corporate treasuries is creating a supply squeeze, with ETFs and public companies now holding nearly 8% of all ether in circulation.

BULLISH IPO RAISES $1.1B, PRICING ABOVE RANGE:  In a sign of strong investor appetite, crypto exchange Bullish (BLSH), the owner of CoinDesk, raised $1.1B in its initial public offering, pricing shares above the expected range. Bloomberg notes that the successful listing on the New York Stock Exchange comes as the company enters a crowded and highly competitive market, facing off against established players like Coinbase and Binance, as well as traditional financial firms expanding into the crypto space. At last look in late morning ahead of the first trade, Bullish was indicated to open at $70-$75 after its IPO priced at $37 per share.

TRADFI GIANTS DEEPEN TOKENIZATION PUSH: The Bank of New York Mellon (BK), is deepening its involvement in digital assets, partnering with real-world asset tokenization platform OpenEden. BNY Mellon will serve as the custodian for the assets underlying OpenEden’s tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, TBILL. This follows other moves by the bank into the digital asset space, including a partnership with Goldman Sachs (GS) on a tokenized money market fund project. In other news, Coinbase (COIN) is relaunching its Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund to provide USD Coin (USDC) liquidity to DeFi protocols, starting with Aave (AAVE) and Jupiter (JUP). Crypto venture capital firm Pantera Capital also revealed it has invested over $300M to date in digital asset treasury companies like BitMine, stating that digital asset treasuries “can generate yield to grow net asset value per share, resulting in more underlying token ownership over time than just holding spot. Therefore, owning a DAT could offer higher return potential compared to holding tokens directly or through an ETF.”

TRUMP’S CRYPTO VENTURES YIELD OVER $2.4B: Since entering the crypto space in 2022, ventures linked to U.S. President Donald Trump have generated an estimated $2.4B, according to a report from The New Yorker. These gains reportedly come from NFT collections, token sales, bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin which is in partner with Hut 8 (HUT), and the official Trump memecoin (TRUMP). The report notes that these ventures account for over 43% of the personal wealth he has accumulated during his political career, raising new conflict-of-interest concerns.

OTHER CRYPTO NEWS: 

• Grayscale has launched two new single-asset trusts linked to protocols on the Sui (SUI) network: DeepBook and Walrus.
• A joint financial crime unit from Tron (TRON), Tether, and TRM Labs, which recently added Binance as a member, says it has frozen over $250M in illicit assets since September 2024.
• The co-founders of the HashFlare crypto mining service, Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin, were sentenced to 16 months in prison for running a $577M Ponzi scheme.

PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) was trading at $120,426.41, while ether (ETH) was trading at $4,639.83.