BitMine Immersion Technologies has added an additional 82,560 Ether (worth approximately $259 million) to Ethereum’s staking system. This has led to increased congestion in the network’s validator entry queues as demand for yield by institutional investors continues to grow.
Ether (ETH) treasury companies have transferred multiple large deposits to Ethereum’s BatchDeposit contract within the past few hours, according to Arcam data. According to on-chain analyst Lookonchain, the new investment increases BitMine’s total ETH stake to 544,064 ether, equivalent to about $1.62 billion at current prices.
BitMine first began staking ETH on December 26th, transferring approximately $219 million worth of ETH into staking-related contracts on the Ethereum network.
In November, BitMine revealed plans to begin staking Ether in the first quarter of 2026 through its internal infrastructure known as the Made-in-America Validator Network (MAVAN). The company said it selected three institutional staking providers for the initial pilot and deployed a limited amount of ETH to evaluate performance, security, and operational reliability before expanding the program.
Related: The role of Ethereum tokenization comes into focus as Tom Lee outlines bullish outlook
Ether validator entry queue approaches 1 million ETH
Meanwhile, due to BitMine’s aggressive staking drive, the Ethereum validator entry queue has reached approximately 977,000 ETH, and the estimated waiting time for new validators to become active is nearly 17 days, according to the Ethereum validator queue on Blockchain Explorer.
Meanwhile, exit activity remains relatively light, with just over 113,000 ETH awaiting withdrawal.
Ethereum validator queue. sauce: validator queue
According to Ethereum network data, more than 35.5 million ETH, or about 29% of the total supply, is currently staked, with an annual staking yield of nearly 2.54%.
Abdul, Head of DeFi at Layer 1 blockchain Monad, said in an X post last week that the last time the entry and exit columns swapped was in June, and that Ether’s price “doubled right after,” predicting that “2026 is going to be a movie.”
Related: BitMine secures $1 billion in ether as large companies stake ETH for yield
Tom Lee drives massive market share expansion with BitMine
As reported by Cointelegraph, Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee is asking shareholders to approve a significant increase in the company’s authorized shares to 50 billion shares, arguing that this is necessary to accommodate a future stock split should the price of Ether increase Bitmine’s valuation.
Lee said the company’s stock price closely tracks ETH and has modeled a scenario in which ether reaches $250,000 if Bitcoin rises to $1 million, pushing Bitmine stock to a price he believes most retail investors will fall to.
magazine: Bitcoin’s crisis level is $82,500, Ethereum is ‘not over yet’: trade secrets