BitMine bought 27,180 ETH last week, lifting its treasury to 5.96 million ETH. Strategy made no bitcoin trades for a second straight week, holding 845,050 BTC. BitMine’s staked ether earns re
BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) added 27,180 ETH over the past week and now holds 5.96 million ether as of September 13, the company said. Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, moved in the opposite direction. It neither bought nor sold any bitcoin between September 8 and 13, keeping its stack at 845,050 BTC, and instead repurchased about 1.42 million STRC preferred shares for roughly $139.3 million. The split captures a widening gap between two of the largest crypto treasury companies. One is still accumulating at full speed. The other has turned to managing the balance sheet it already built.
Strategy has repurchased $139M of $STRC. As of 9/13/26, we hold 845,050 $BTC and $6.4B of USD Assets. $MSTRhttps://t.co/NDYaVxz2sm
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) September 14, 2026
BitMine’s position now equals about 4.9% of Ethereum’s 122 million supply, putting the company 98% of the way toward its stated goal of owning 5% of all ETH. Chairman Tom Lee has built the vehicle with a single objective, and the weekly purchases are the mechanical expression of it. The company keeps issuing equity, converts the proceeds into ether, and stakes the bulk of what it holds.
That last step is the difference that matters. BitMine has staked roughly 5.07 million ETH, about 85% of its holdings, and projects annualized staking revenue near $334 million at a recent 2.62% yield. Staking pays the company in fresh ether. Those coins compound on top of the existing pile without any new capital raise, and they gain or lose value with the ETH price like the rest of the treasury. A bitcoin treasury has no equivalent. Bitcoin does not stake and pays its holder nothing for sitting still, so every coin Strategy owns depends entirely on price for its return.
BitMine’s treasury has two income levers, price appreciation and staking yield, while Strategy’s has one. In a flat or sideways market, the staked ether still throws off ether, which is why BitMine has little reason to slow its purchases as long as it can raise capital on acceptable terms. Lee has publicly floated ETH targets of $6,000 and higher, and those figures are his forecasts rather than settled outcomes, so they belong in the speculative column. The staking revenue is not a forecast. It is a structural feature of the asset.
None of this makes the model risk-free. BitMine’s share price has swung from a 52-week low of $12.80 to a high of $65.60, and the stock trades close to the value of its underlying holdings rather than at the large premium these vehicles once commanded.
Strategy spent late 2025 and early 2026 buying aggressively, at times paying up near record prices. The posture has since changed. The company disposed of 3,588 BTC between June 29 and July 5 to help cover preferred dividend obligations, its first meaningful sale in years. It resumed buying briefly in late August, then went quiet again. The cash that once funded coin purchases is now flowing into preferred buybacks and reserves.
Strategy’s shift, in six moves LATE 2025BUY Aggressive BTC buying, including purchases near record highs APRIL 2026BUY Bought 34,164 BTC for about $2.54 billion JUN 29 – JUL 5, 2026SELL Sold 3,588 BTC to fund preferred dividends, its first meaningful sale in years AUG 10, 2026SELL Sold 1,690 BTC to fund STRC buyback AUG 24 – 30, 2026BUY Bought 4,603 BTC SEP 8 – 13, 2026PAUSE No BTC trades; repurchased $139.3M of STRC preferred stockThe USD side now carries real weight. As of September 14, Strategy’s USD Reserve and USD Cash stood at $5.1 billion and $1.3 billion, the $6.4 billion in dollar assets Michael Saylor cited. That reserve does two jobs. It covers dividend and interest payments on the preferred stack, and it sits ready as dry powder if bitcoin drops far enough to make buying attractive again. Where BitMine treats cash as fuel for the next purchase, Strategy is treating it as a cushion.
Key difference
Native yield None +27,180 ETH Last week 0 BTC $549M Cash reserve $6.4B ~$15B Market cap ~$53B ~1x its holdings Trades at ~0.80x its BTC (basic) Holdings and reserves as of Sept 13-14, 2026. Values approximate.This is the counter-thesis to any argument that BitMine has the better hand. Strategy carries a market capitalization near $53 billion against BitMine’s roughly $15 billion, and its bitcoin stack is more than four times the size of BitMine’s crypto position. It holds the first-mover brand, the deepest capital-markets machinery in the sector, and a bitcoin thesis that many institutions still treat as the lower-risk crypto exposure because it rests on the oldest and largest network. Size buys liquidity, index inclusion, and staying power. For a treasury company, those are not small advantages. Its underlying software business brought in $122 million last quarter, up 6.9% from a year earlier, while an $8.2 billion non-cash bitcoin writedown drove the headline loss for the period.
The structure Strategy used to grow explains its current caution. The company funded much of its stack with convertible debt and multiple layers of preferred stock, and all of that ranks ahead of common shareholders. On an enterprise-value basis the stock trades at about 1.07 times its bitcoin, but the common shares sit near 0.80 times on a basic measure, meaning the equity is valued below the headline bitcoin figure once the senior claims are counted. Buying back STRC below its target price chips away at that overhang and trims the dividend bill. MSTR shares fell 4.7% last week and closed Friday at $130.97, still down around 71% from their 2025 peak. Preferred buybacks and a fat cash reserve read as a company defending its equity rather than one racing to add coins.
Both models have prominent skeptics, which is worth weighing against the bull case on either side.
Peter Schiff has attacked Strategy for months. He has accused Saylor of committing fraud and predicted the company could become a source of sustained selling pressure on bitcoin. In earlier posts he argued that MSTR will eventually go bankrupt and called the business model fundamentally flawed. He has also pointed to the shift from near-zero-cost convertibles toward high-yield preferred instruments as evidence that demand for pure bitcoin upside is fading. Grayscale and others have publicly disputed his bearish read.
BitMine has drawn fire too. Michael Burry raised an Enron-style warning about off-balance-sheet risk, which Tom Lee rebutted as a misreading of how the financial structure works. The critiques cut in different directions. Schiff questions whether a leveraged bitcoin holder can survive a deep drawdown, while the doubts around BitMine center on accounting transparency and the durability of its premium.
Analyst positioning on BMNR
For investors, the divergence sets up a clean choice. BitMine offers leveraged ether exposure with a staking yield attached and the volatility that comes with a stock trading near its net asset value. Strategy offers the largest bitcoin balance sheet in the corporate world, now run more conservatively, with a dollar reserve that can absorb shocks or fund the next dip. The tradeoff between yield-driven accumulation and cushioned scale is the real decision, not simply ether against bitcoin.
The next few weeks bring two dates worth watching. BitMine sits roughly 140,000 ETH short of its 5% supply target, a threshold it could cross within weeks at its current pace. MSCI’s consultation on how to treat digital-asset treasury companies closes on September 30, and the outcome could reshape index eligibility for this entire category, affecting the passive inflows that both stocks have come to rely on.
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