Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the largest corporate holder of ether ETH$3,027.68, secured investor approval to increase the number of authorized shares, giving the company greater flexibility to raise capital.
The measure, Proposal 2 at Bitmine’s annual stockholder meeting on Jan. 15, passed with 81% of votes cast in favor, the company said in a Tuesday press release.
The proposal does not mean issuing new stock immediately, but instead raises the ceiling on how many shares the company can issue in the future.
BMNR is lower by 8% on Tuesday alongside a sharp decline in the price of ETH to just above $3,000.
Authorized shares set the legal limit on how much stock a company can sell. Increasing that limit opens the door for Bitmine to issue new equity to fund growth, pay for acquisitions, or support its ongoing accumulation of ether.
While issuing more shares could eventually dilute current investors, Bitmine executives sought to reassure shareholders that they would not sell below the company’s market net asset value (mNAV), which reflects its significant ETH holdings, to which 35,268 ETH were added last week. The company is trading at 0.86x mNAV at the time of writing.
The company also added that those holdings now comprise 4.203 million tokens, or about 3.5% of ether’s circulating supply, along with 193 BTC and a $22 million stake in Eightco Holdings (ORBS).