Vitalik Buterin, Sam Altman to Attend Bitmine Shareholder Vote: Tom Lee
Bitmine Immersion Technologies will host an unusually high-profile annual shareholder meeting today in Las Vegas, with Vitalik Buterin and Sam Altman expected to attend, according to Bitmine chair Tom Lee.
Key Takeaways:
- Bitmine is seeking approval for a major share increase to keep buying Ethereum.
- Tom Lee says the company’s growth depends on passing the shareholder vote.
- Bitmine now ranks among the largest corporate holders of Ether.
The meeting marks the company’s first annual gathering since it began accumulating Ethereum in June 2025 and will center on a proposal to dramatically expand Bitmine’s share authorization.
Shareholders are being asked to approve an increase in the number of common shares the firm can issue, from 500 million to 50 billion.
Lee confirmed the attendance of Buterin and Altman on Wednesday while outlining why the vote is critical to Bitmine’s strategy.
“If you don’t vote in favour of increasing the shares, the company will stop growing,” Lee said during an interview on SamproTV, a South Korean media outlet.
Bitmine finances most of its Ethereum purchases by issuing and selling new shares, making shareholder approval essential to maintaining its acquisition pace.
Lee said the proposed increase is designed to prevent repeated trips back to investors for future approvals.
“We want to have enough shares so that we never have to seek another authorisation again,” he said.
The company is part of a growing group of publicly traded firms operating as digital asset treasuries, whose primary mandate is to accumulate and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.
Bitmine has focused exclusively on Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network by market value and the backbone of a large portion of decentralized finance activity.
According to the company, Bitmine has accumulated just over 4.1 million Ether, valued at roughly $13.8 billion at current prices.
The scale of those holdings places the firm among the largest corporate holders of the asset.
The presence of Buterin and Altman has added intrigue to the meeting. Altman has rarely spoken publicly about Ethereum and is more closely associated with World, a separate crypto project launched through Tools for Humanity, a company he co-founded.
Buterin, meanwhile, has not publicly commented on Bitmine despite the firm’s sizable exposure to Ethereum.
Lee and Buterin have crossed paths before, appearing together at the Token2049 conference in Singapore in October 2025.
Lee said both Buterin and Altman are expected to speak at the meeting, though the topics of their remarks have not been disclosed.
Buterin Claims Ethereum Has Solved the Blockchain Trilemma
Last week, Buterin said the Ethereum network has solved the blockchain trilemma, crossing a milestone many in crypto long viewed as unattainable.
The Ethereum mastermind argued that recent and upcoming upgrades have finally aligned decentralization, security, and scalability through code already running in production.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s staking dynamics shifted sharply as validator exits dried up and fresh capital flowed back into long-term lockups, signaling a notable change in market behavior among large ether holders.
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