Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow
Deep Tide Introduction: If you're still holding Ethereum, with its price more than halved this year, you might be wondering who's buying at these levels.
The answer is the most conservative money on Wall Street. JP Morgan's tokenized money market fund, JLTXX, has seen its on-chain size surge from $200 million to nearly $700 million in seven weeks, growing about 250% in one month, and it runs exclusively on Ethereum. In the same week, BitMine, led by Tom Lee, purchased another $73 million worth of ETH, bringing its total holdings to about 4.8% of Ethereum's circulating supply. The ETH price is falling, but institutions are accumulating; these two things are happening simultaneously.
JP Morgan has quietly turned a tokenized fund into one of the fastest-growing products in recent years.
According to The Defiant, the on-chain management scale of JP Morgan's OnChain Liquidity Token Money Market Fund (ticker: JLTXX) grew by approximately 250% over the past month, based on data from blockchain analytics platform Token Terminal. This fund operates only on Ethereum.
From $200M to Nearly $700M in Seven Weeks, JP Morgan Seeded with Its Own Capital
JLTXX launched on May 13th. JP Morgan initially seeded it with $100 million of its own capital, and custodian Anchorage Digital also participated in the initial subscription. The on-chain total value locked (TVL) on the first day was about $200 million. According to a post by ethereuminsti on X, this number reached $695 million seven weeks later, a 248% increase, closely matching Token Terminal's ~250% figure.
The fund's investments are anything but aggressive, consisting entirely of short-term U.S. Treasury bills and overnight repurchase agreements fully collateralized by Treasuries or cash, identical to the safest assets in traditional money market funds. What's truly different is where it runs. JP Morgan has its own private settlement network called Kinexys, but JLTXX, like the bank's first tokenized fund MONY launched last December, chose the public Ethereum mainnet over its own chain. The fact that a bank with its own blockchain infrastructure places its product on a public chain is a signal in itself.
For ETH holders, the implication here is: Ethereum is gradually transforming from a speculative asset into an underlying ledger for compliant financial products in the eyes of institutions. This type of demand has little relation to short-term price fluctuations but will solidify into long-term network usage.
Stablecoin Reserve Needs Behind the Growth
The rapid growth of JLTXX is partly because it's being used as a reserve for stablecoins.
According to disclosures by a Dune analysis account, this fund has been added to the reserve asset pool for the USDG stablecoin, alongside BlackRock's BUIDL and Superstate's STBXX. This points to a growing demand: stablecoin issuers need on-chain Treasury exposure that complies with the rules of the GENIUS Act. The GENIUS Act, U.S. stablecoin legislation passed in 2025, specifies the conditions that stablecoin reserve assets must meet, and tokenized Treasury money market funds fit perfectly into this niche.
JP Morgan designed JLTXX to accept subscriptions both in cash and stablecoins, effectively positioning the fund at the intersection of regulated finance and crypto-native infrastructure. It's not alone in this race. BlackRock has filed documents with the SEC for two tokenized money market products, one of which involves tokenizing a share class of its existing $6.1 billion BlackRock US Treasury Fund on Ethereum. BlackRock's BUIDL is currently the world's largest tokenized fund, with assets under management surpassing $2.8 billion in early 2026 and spanning eight blockchains.
Observers can discern the direction from this: stablecoin reserves are a cake that is definitely growing, and institutions are almost unanimously choosing Ethereum as the foundational layer for that cake.
BitMine Buys Another $73M in a Week, Holdings Approach 5% of Circulating Supply
While traditional finance approaches Ethereum from the asset side, accumulation on-chain hasn't stopped.
According to a holdings update released on Monday by BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), the Ethereum treasury company chaired by Fundstrat's Tom Lee purchased 42,197 ETH over the past week, valued at approximately $73 million at the time. This purchase brings BitMine's total ETH holdings to 5,742,237, accounting for about 4.8% of Ethereum's circulating supply. BitMine's own accounts list its crypto and other asset total value at $11.1 billion, including its ETH position valued at $1,800 per ETH, 206 BTC, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, a $71 million stake in Eightco Holdings, and $527 million in cash and marketable securities.
One detail worth noting for holders: BitMine's staked ETH amount remained flat at 4,879,157, meaning the newly acquired coins this week were not staked. The company's publicly stated goal is to control 5% of Ethereum's total supply, and its weekly accumulation is approaching that threshold.
A risk note is warranted here: BitMine's holding value is highly dependent on the coin price. Its accounts value ETH at $1,800, while as of July 6th, the spot ETH price was around $1,747, already below its valuation benchmark. In June this year, insiders also warned that the company faced a cash shortfall of about $30 million, which Tom Lee publicly denied as a financing crisis. For those following such treasury companies to go long on ETH, the double leverage of the company's stock price and the coin price is a double-edged sword.
Price Falls, Institutions Buy: How to Read This Divergence
Putting the two threads together paints a contradictory picture: institutions are accelerating their entry while the coin price is moving down.
Ethereum has had a tough year. According to multiple market data sources, ETH has fallen over 50% from its all-time high of around $4,900 in August 2025. It closed the first three quarters of 2026 with three consecutive quarterly declines, the first recorded three-quarter losing streak. Spot Ethereum ETFs also recorded net outflows in June. On-chain activity is declining too. According to Glassnode data, the 14-day moving average of active addresses dropped from about 795,000 in early February to about 420,000 in June, a decline of about 46%.
Therefore, the growth in JP Morgan's fund size and BitMine's holdings tells a different story from the secondary market price action. Institutions are buying into Ethereum's long-term position as a settlement layer and compliant asset infrastructure, betting on the stablecoin reserve and tokenized asset trend. The secondary market is selling based on short-term liquidity, sentiment, and ETF fund flows. These two narratives can diverge for a long time, and there's no certainty about which will materialize first.
For holders or potential entrants, the operational implication here is: institutional accumulation and the tokenization narrative are real, fundamental changes, but they do not constitute a short-term price floor. Historically, concentrated buying by large holders hasn't always been a clean buy signal; a local top followed the whale accumulation in February. It's valid to consider institutional entry as a long-term logic, but caution is advised when using it as a basis for timing a market bottom.
