BitMine Stakes $1B Ether, Corporations Seek Crypto Product

Corporations are turning to Ethereum staking for passive income, a shift that is shrinking the amount of Ether available for sale on the open market.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate Ether (ETH) owner, has earned more than $1 billion worth of 342,560 ETH in the two days to Sunday, according to blockchain data platform Lookonchain.

Staking involves locking ETH into the Ethereum blockchain to earn an annual percentage yield (APY) of 3%–5%.

BitMine's $1 billion staked Ether has had an impact on Ethereum's validator queue, with the entry queue doubling the size of the exit queue for the first time in more than six months, Cointelegraph reported on Monday.

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According to validatorqueue, the validation entry queue lasts 12 days and 20 hours with a value of 739,824 ETH pending and the exit stops at 6 days and 2 hours with 349,867 ETH pending withdrawal.

The queue shows that validators who show more long-term confidence in Ether are looking to part with ETH for the incoming revenue compared to those who are waiting to withdraw their shares.

When the exit queue is crowded, it indicates that validators are looking to pick up Ether to sell their holdings.

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Corporate treasuries appreciate ether production

Most of the leading corporate Ether holders, including SharpLink Gaming, Bit Digital and The Ether Machine, among others, are leveraging a large portion of your ETH for functional income.

Sharplink Gaming, the second-largest Ether holder, has “almost fully” deposited its Ether holdings, generating a total of 9,701 Ether worth $29 million in share awards, according to the company's dashboard.

Ether Machine, the third-largest holder of $1.49 billion in Ether, has “fully integrated” its treasury onchain and consistently ranks among the top 5% of validators for reward efficiency, the company announced in October.

The increasing amount of ETH in stock is effectively reducing the supply of Ether for sale, which is a long-term store of value for the second largest cryptocurrency.

Even as the amount of ETH in stock continues to rise, the industry's most successful traders, tracked as “smart money” traders on Nansen's blockchain intelligence platform, continue to reduce their holdings of Ether.

Smart money traders sold a total of $4.26 million worth of space ether tokens across 53 wallets last week, while Well wallets bought a total of $11.6 million during the same period, Nansen said.

Public representatives also bought about $6 million worth of Ether, while fresh wallets bought more than $517,000 last week, showing Ether investors' interest in the newly created wallets.

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