Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel has acquired a 9.1% stake in BitMine Immersion Technologies, a crypto infrastructure firm led by Tom Lee, founder and CIO of Fundstrat, according to a new SEC filing.
Thiel, who reported shared voting and dispositive power over 5,094,000 shares, joins a growing list of institutional backers eyeing crypto-native companies not just for their mining capabilities, but for their increasing role as large-scale holders of digital assets.
BitMine has positioned itself as a leading Ethereum treasury firm. On July 14, the company disclosed that its ETH holdings had exceeded 163,000 ETH, valued at approximately $500 million — more than double the $250 million it raised in a private placement just five days earlier.
BitMine’s strategy mirrors the Bitcoin playbook pioneered by MicroStrategy, now rebranded as Strategy, which has amassed over 600,000 BTC and redefined how public companies could treat crypto as a balance sheet asset.
The acquisition comes after Thiel, alongside other tech billionaires, reportedly established Erebor, a bank aimed at filling the gap left by Silicon Valley Bank in serving tech-focused sectors such as artificial intelligence, crypto, manufacturing, and defense.