BitMine Immersion Technologies has added an extra 82,560 Ether value roughly $259 million to Ethereum's staking system, adding to congestion within the network's validator entry queue as institutional demand for yield continues to rise.
Data from Arkham shows that the Ether (ETH) treasury firm has made several large deposits to Ethereum's BatchDeposit contract in the previous couple of hours. According to on-chain analyst Lookonchain, the full variety of ETH staked by BitMine has increased to 544,064 Ether, which is value around $1.62 billion at current prices.
BitMine began staking ETH on December twenty sixth, transferring nearly $219 million value of ETH into staking-related contracts on the Ethereum network.
In November, BitMine announced plans to start staking Ether in the primary quarter of 2026 using an internal infrastructure called the Made-in-America Validator Network (MAVAN). The company said it chosen three institutional staking providers for an initial pilot and staked a limited amount of ETH to evaluate performance, security and operational reliability before expanding this system.
The entry queue for the Ether validator is approaching a million ETH
Meanwhile, BitMine's aggressive staking push has helped increase Ethereum's validator entry queue to around 977,000 ETH, with an estimated wait time of nearly 17 days for brand new validators to activate, based on blockchain explorer Ethereum Validator Queue.
On the opposite hand, exit activity stays comparatively low, with just over 113,000 ETH awaiting withdrawal.
Ethereum validator queue. Source: ValidatorQueue
Ethereum network data shows that greater than 35.5 million ETH, or about 29% of the full supply, is now staked, while the annual staking return is about 2.54%.
Abdul, the pinnacle of DeFi at layer-1 blockchain Monad, said in an
Tom Lee is driving massive stock expansion at BitMine
As Cointelegraph reported, BitMine CEO Tom Lee is urging shareholders to approve a big increase in the corporate's authorized share count to 50 billion, arguing that the move is needed to permit for future stock splits should the worth of Ether drive up BitMine's valuation.
Lee said the corporate's share price closely tracks ETH and modeled scenarios through which Ether hits $250,000 if Bitcoin rises to $1 million, a level that will drive BitMine shares to prices he believes would overwhelm most retail investors.
