The post BitMine stakes 259M in Ethereum pushing validator queue near 1M ETH appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a public digital asset company, has expanded Ethereum’s staking system with an additional 82,560 Ether, valued at around $259 million. This move has contributed to congestion in the network’s validator entry queue, driven by rising institutional demand for staking yields. Regarding the situation, Arkham released recent data reporting several significant deposits made by the Ether treasury firm to Ethereum’s BatchDeposit contract. These deposits were made in the past few hours. Following the new stake, a report from on-chain analyst Lookonchain revealed that the total number of ETH staked now amounts to 544,064 Ether, worth approximately $1.62 billion, according to current prices.  BitMine kicks off major ETH staking push BitMine implemented its decision to stake additional ETH on December 26, 2025, and transferred almost $219 million in ETH into contracts related to staking on the Ethereum network.  Before carrying out this move, BitMine initially made clear its intentions to begin staking Ether in the first quarter of 2026 in a statement published in November.  The statement also noted that this staking process will take place using the company’s internal infrastructure, known as the Made-in-America Validator Network (MAVAN). It was also confirmed that BitMine selected three institutional staking providers for a pilot initiative. Apart from this, sources disclosed that the firm intended to deploy a limited amount of ETH meant to evaluate performance, security, and reliability before executing their motive to add new stakes. Meanwhile, reports highlighted that BitMine’s intensified effort into staking led to Ethereum’s validator entry queue reaching around 977,000 ETH. Due to this congestion, the Ethereum Validator Queue, a blockchain explorer, indicates that new validators are expected to wait approximately 17 days to become active. On the other hand, analysts conducted research and discovered that the amount of exit activity is relatively low, with slightly more than…

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Filed under: News - @ January 3, 2026 2:19 pm