BitMine Immersion Technologies has added another 82,560 Ether worth approximately $259 million to the Ethereum staking system, increasing congestion in the network validator input queue as institutional demand for profitability continues to grow.

Data from Arkham can be seen that the Ether (ETH) treasury company has sent multiple huge deposits to the BatchDeposit Ethereum contract over the past few hours. With the novel share, the total value of ETH staked by BitMine increased to 544,064 Ether, worth approximately $1.62 billion at current prices, According to to the Lookonchain onchain analyst.

BitMine first began staking ETH on December 26, committing nearly $219 million worth of ETH to staking contracts on the Ethereum network.

In November, BitMine revealed plans to begin staking Ether in the first quarter of 2026 via an internal infrastructure known as the Made-in-America Validator Network (MAVAN). The company said it has selected three institutional staking providers for an initial pilot, deploying a circumscribed amount of ETH to assess performance, security and operational reliability before expanding the program.

Related: The role of Ethereum tokenization comes into focus as Tom Lee lays out a bullish outlook

The Ether validator’s input queue is approaching 1 million ETH

Meanwhile, BitMine’s aggressive staking helped push the Ethereum validator input queue to approximately 977,000 ETH, with an estimated wait time for novel validators to activate of almost 17 days, According to to the Ethereum Validator Queue blockchain explorer.

On the other hand, output activity remains relatively low, with just over 113,000 ETH waiting to be withdrawn.

Ethereum network data shows that over 35.5 million ETH is currently staked, or approximately 29% of the total supply, while the annual staking return is close to 2.54%.

Abdul, head of DeFi on layer 1 of the Monad blockchain, he said last week in a post on X that the last time the entry and exit queue changed in June, the price of Ether “doubled shortly thereafter” and predicted that “2026 will be a movie.”

Related: BitMine locks up $1 billion in Ether as huge corporations invest in ETH for profit

Tom Lee is pushing for a massive expansion of shares in BitMine

As Cointelegraph reports, BitMine CEO Tom Lee is urging shareholders to approve a edged escalate in the company’s authorized shares to 50 billion, arguing that the move is necessary to accommodate future stock splits if the price of Ether boosts BitMine’s valuation.

Lee said the company’s stock price is closely tracking ETH and is modeling scenarios in which Ether reaches $250,000 if Bitcoin rises to $1 million, meaning BitMine’s stock will push to prices he believes most retail investors would value.

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