• Lee urged BitMine shareholders to increase authorized shares from 500 million to 50 billion.
• The move will enable the company to conduct capital market activities, take advantage of opportunistic deals and accommodate future share splits.
• BitMine holds over 4.11 million ETH, worth about $12.8 billion.

Chairman of Ethereum treasury BitMine Immersion, Thomas 'Tom' Lee, is seeking support to increase the firm's authorised shares ahead of its annual shareholders' vote.

In his first Chairman's message of 2026, Lee urged shareholders to approve the board's proposal to expand the company's total authorized shares from 500 million to 50 billion.

"This doesn't mean we're issuing 50 billion shares. That's what we want the total max shares to be," said Lee.

He noted that the move will enable the company to continue conducting capital market activities such as at-the-market (ATM) offerings, convertible note issuances and warrants. Additionally, it will create room for opportunistic deals, such as mergers and acquisitions.

Future share splits key reason for the increase

Most importantly, Lee emphasized that the increase is required to accommodate future share splits. Since pivoting to an ETH treasury in July, Lee highlighted that BMNR share price has closely tracked ETH's price.

If Ethereum (ETH) continues to trade at its 8-year average relative to Bitcoin (BTC), and the trend of tokenization continues to grow, the leading altcoin could rise to $250,000 if BTC reaches $1 million, according to Lee. This would make shares pricey for the public if BMNR maintains its correlation with ETH.

Shareholders have until 14 January to vote on the proposal, after which BitMine will hold its annual shareholders meeting on 15 January in Las Vegas.

BitMine holds over 4.11 million ETH, worth about $12.8 billion at the time of publication. The firm recently began staking portions of its assets, deploying 408,627 ETH across three staking providers.

BMNR closed at $31.19, up 14% on Friday.