Ethereum Foundation sells $10.2M worth of ETH to BitMine in OTC deal

The Ethereum Foundation just offloaded 5,000 ETH to BitMine Immersion Technologies in a slick OTC deal worth $10.2M — that's $2,042.96 per ETH. Proceeds go straight to funding core ops: protocol R&D, ecosystem growth, and community grants. The transfer's coming from an EF Safe multisig wallet, because they don't mess around with security.

BitMine (NYSE: BMNR) is now sitting on over 4.5M ETH worth ~$9.3B, making them one of the biggest corporate ETH whales. Chaired by Fundstrat's Tom Lee, they've been stacking ETH since mid-2025, basically copying MicroStrategy's BTC playbook but for Ethereum.

This isn't EF's first rodeo. Back in July 2025, they sold 10,000 ETH to SharpLink Gaming for $25.7M at $2,572.37 per ETH. These sales are part of their treasury management framework launched in June 2025 — they periodically convert ETH to maintain fiat reserves, targeting ~15% annual spending while keeping a multi-year runway.

Timing is everything: this news drops right after EF started staking part of its treasury, planning to deploy ~70,000 ETH into validators using open-source infra.

EF just published a fresh mandate outlining their role: Ethereum stays censorship-resistant, open source, and privacy-preserving while scaling for global adoption. They're focusing on core protocol upgrades, long-term research, cybersecurity, and dev tools — while gradually reducing their direct influence. Translation: they're building the tools and stepping back.