BitMine Immersion Technologies has bought an additional $49 million worth of ether over the past week, lifting its total holdings to about 4.8 percent of circulating supply.

Decrypt reported on Sunday, local time, that BitMine bought 27,801 ether last week, bringing its total holdings to 5,770,038 ether.

With ether trading around $1,780 as of Sunday, the value of BitMine's ether holdings was estimated at about $10.1 billion. It is continuing a treasury strategy of building a large ether position among listed companies.

The purchase came alongside an expansion in activity on the Ethereum network. Tom Lee (톰 리), who leads BitMine, pointed to Robinhood Chain, Robinhood's Ethereum-based layer 2 network, as a key backdrop. In a statement, he cited Robinhood Chain mainnet, launched on July 1, as one of the major crypto success stories of 2026 and said the Arbitrum-based network is quickly increasing its presence.

Lee said trading volume on Robinhood Chain has already surpassed $1 billion in dollar terms and is now recording more volume than any decentralised exchange. He called it "an example that shows the usefulness of Ethereum-based chains and product-market fit".

DeFiLlama data showed Robinhood Chain's decentralised exchange trading volume over the past week exceeded $3 billion. Over the same period, Ethereum logged $7.27 billion and Solana recorded $12.34 billion, meaning Robinhood Chain still lagged major established networks.

Robinhood Chain finalises transactions on Ethereum and uses ether as its native gas token. Market interest also rose after some early memecoin traders posted large unrealised gains. One trader turned $85 into more than $2 million in unrealised profit, one case showed.

Lee said Robinhood's 27 million users are paying crypto fees denominated in ether and that "retail investors are starting to recognise Ethereum as money".

Token Terminal data showed active addresses on Robinhood Chain have so far totalled 788,000. That means actual on-chain activity remains limited compared with its large user base.

Market prices have not yet reacted strongly. Ether is down about 2 percent over the past 24 hours, and its gain over the past week was limited to about 1.3 percent. BitMine shares have fallen 5.7 percent over the past five sessions and traded around $14.65 early in Sunday's session, down more than 2.2 percent since the open.

That suggests BitMine's additional buying is a move that places more weight on expanding use of the Ethereum network than on short-term price moves. The next points to watch are whether Robinhood Chain's early surge in trading leads to higher demand for ether and whether actual user activity expands further.