BitMine Stakes $259M Extra ETH as Validator Queue Nears 1M Ether

BitMine Immersion Applied sciences has added one other 82,560 Ether, price roughly $259 million, to Ethereum’s staking system, intensifying congestion within the community’s validator entry queue as institutional demand for yield continues to construct.

Knowledge from Arkham shows that the Ether (ETH) treasury agency despatched a number of giant deposits to Ethereum’s BatchDeposit contract throughout the previous few hours. With the brand new stake, BitMine’s whole staked ETH has climbed to 544,064 Ether, valued at roughly $1.62 billion at present costs, accordingly to onchain analyst Lookonchain.

BitMine first began staking ETH on Dec. 26, transferring practically $219 million price of ETH to staking-related contracts on the Ethereum community.

In November, BitMine revealed plans to start staking Ether within the first quarter of 2026 via an inner infrastructure referred to as the Made-in-America Validator Community (MAVAN). The corporate stated it had chosen three institutional staking suppliers for an preliminary pilot, deploying a restricted quantity of ETH to guage efficiency, safety and operational reliability earlier than increasing this system.

Associated: Ethereum’s tokenization function takes focus as Tom Lee outlines bullish outlook

Ether validator entry queue nears 1 million ETH

In the meantime, BitMine’s aggressive staking push has helped push Ethereum’s validator entry queue to roughly 977,000 ETH, with an estimated wait time of practically 17 days for brand spanking new validators to change into energetic, accordingly to the blockchain explorer Ethereum Validator Queue.

Alternatively, exit exercise stays comparatively gentle, with simply over 113,000 ETH ready to withdraw.

Ethereum’s community knowledge exhibits that greater than 35.5 million ETH, or roughly 29% of whole provide, is now staked, whereas the annualized staking yield stands close to 2.54%.

Abdul, the top of DeFi at layer 1 blockchain Monad, said in an X submit final week that the final time the entry and exit queue flipped in June, Ether “doubled in worth shortly after,” and predicted that “2026 goes to be a film.”

Associated: BitMine locks up $1B in Ether as large companies stake ETH for yield

Tom Lee pushes huge share growth at BitMine

As Cointelegraph reported, Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine, is urging shareholders to approve a pointy enhance within the firm’s licensed share rely to 50 billion, arguing that the transfer is required to accommodate future inventory splits if Ether’s worth drives BitMine’s valuation larger.