Ethereum smashes $120bn staking record as price seen to hit $40,000

Ethereum has reached a new milestone with 30% of circulating tokens staked as analysts expect the second biggest cryptocurrency’s price to surge.

The staked Ether represents a $120 billion bet on the blockchain network, ValidatorQueue data shows.

Bitmine has emerged as a top vote of confidence for the proof-of-stake mechanism by locking up $600 million in Ethereum on Wednesday. The digital asset treasury firm is now staking about $6 billion worth of the crypto, which is close to half of its total $13 billion in total holdings.

The fresh milestone comes as Ethereum’s price rose 8% over the past week, trading at $3,359 at time of reporting. To be sure, it is still down 32% from its all-time high of $4,950 set back in August.

Cryptocurrencies now trade at $3.3 trillion, around 25% below their October peak. Meanwhile, other assets like stocks and gold have pushed towards their all-time high in 2026.

But despite Ethereum’s poor price performance relative to other assets, Wall Street is betting big on the blockchain network.

JPMorgan chose it for the first-ever tokenised money market fund, an asset class valued at $9 trillion. Morgan Stanley also filed for an Ethereum exchange-traded fund product earlier this month.

British bank Standard Chartered told investors this month it expects Ethereum to outperform Bitcoin going forward and that the price will hit $40,000 per token by 2030.

Bitmine vote

Backed by top institutions including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, Bitmine is the largest Ethereum treasury in the world, now holding over 3% of the total supply.

Chair Tom Lee said on Monday that Bitmine “will be the largest staking provider” in the entire cryptocurrency industry and anticipates over $1 million daily in revenue from staking Ethereum.

Lee has urged all Bitmine shareholders to vote before a shareholder meeting on January 15 to support his proposal to increase the company’s authorised shares to from 500 million to 50 billion in order to set the stage for a future stock split.

Bitmine’s share price jumped 5% on Wednesday, Bloomberg data shows.

Lee argues that a stock split will be necessary because Bitmine’s share price “follows Ethereum price,” and projects the company’s stock trading at $5,000 per share when Ethereum reaches $250,000.

Publicly-traded companies perform stock splits to lower the price of a single share. That makes it seem more affordable for regular investors to buy in without changing the company’s actual total value.

‘Don’t fight Washington’

Lee, who is also head of research at Fundstrat, a Wall Street research firm, warned investors against fighting the White House in a video update to the firm’s clients.

“Washington is picking winners and losers,” Lee said, arguing that this dynamic matters more than macroeconomics or monetary policy.

Lee said that losers include traditional credit card companies, the Federal Reserve, and institutional mortgage buyers amid President Donald Trump’s push to cap credit card interest rates and political pressure on the Fed.

Winners are firms in energy, materials, tech, crypto, industrials, financials, and other companies that benefit economic growth, he said.