Founders Fund discloses 9.1% stake in BitMine (July 15, 2025)

On July 15, 2025, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund disclosed via a Schedule 13G filed with the SEC that it held a 9.1% stake — 5,094,000 common shares — in BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE American: BMNR), the former Bitcoin miner that had just pivoted to an Ethereum-treasury strategy chaired by Fundstrat’s Tom Lee. The position had been acquired through BitMine’s June 30, 2025 $250 million private placement (55,555,556 shares at $4.50), in which Founders Fund was a named participant. BMNR shares surged roughly 20% on the disclosure (CNBC, Decrypt, The Defiant, July 16, 2025).

What Happened / Key Facts

• The June 30, 2025 private placement was led by MOZAYYX, with named participation from Founders Fund, Pantera, FalconX, Republic Digital, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, DCG, Diametric Capital, Occam Crest Management, Graticule (GAMA), GSR, and Tom Lee personally (BitMine press release).
• The Schedule 13G named the reporting entities as FF Consumer Growth II, LP; The Founders Fund Growth II Management, LP; FF Upper Tier GP, LLC; FF Consumer Growth, LLC; The Founders Fund Growth Management, LLC; and Peter Thiel — with FF Consumer Growth II, LP holding 3,926,759 shares (7.0%) and FF Consumer Growth, LLC holding 1,167,241 shares (2.1%), per reporting on the filing (The Defiant, July 16, 2025).
• A Schedule 13G is a passive-investor disclosure (no intent to control or direct the company) — distinct from a 13D activist filing.
• Tom Lee had been installed as BitMine Chairman effective June 30, 2025.
• A later Schedule 13G/A (late 2025) reported Founders Fund had reduced the position by ~50% to roughly 2,547,000 shares (then below 1% of a larger diluted float). Exact filing date and proceeds not confirmed from the primary filing in this pass.

Why This Event Matters

This is the crypto-side anchor of Founders Fund’s documented crypto-AI cross-investment overlap. Within a four-month window, the same Thiel-network fund:

1. July 2025 — took a 9.1% passive position in BitMine, a top publicly traded Ethereum-treasury vehicle (this event); and
2. October 2025 — participated in Crusoe Energy Systems’ $1.375B Series E, the AI-infrastructure round capitalizing the Stargate Abilene developer (see 2025-10-24–crusoe-series-e-mubadala-capital-valor-co-lead).

Founders Fund is already documented as the common cap-table participant across the Thiel surveillance/defense stack (Palantir, Anduril, Scale AI, Carbyne — see founders-fund). This event extends that shared-investor visibility to the crypto-treasury layer, alongside the AI-infrastructure layer via Crusoe. The Crusoe Series E roster is itself a convergence node (1789 Capital / Mubadala / Founders Fund / Valor / Nvidia); this BitMine position adds the crypto axis to the same fund’s cross-sector footprint.

Discipline: this is a disclosed financial position, not evidence of operational control or of coordination between BitMine and any other portfolio company. Founders Fund’s BitMine 13G is explicitly a passive filing.

Broader Context

The 2025 wave of “crypto-treasury companies” — public shells raising equity to hold ETH or BTC and trade at a premium to net asset value — became a documented capital-markets pattern in the Trump-2 crypto-deregulation environment. BitMine, chaired by a prominent street strategist (Tom Lee) and backed by crossover institutional names (Founders Fund, ARK / Cathie Wood’s ~$182M July 2025 buy, Pantera, Galaxy Digital, DCG), was among the largest. The structural point for this research architecture is narrower: it places Thiel’s flagship venture fund simultaneously in crypto-treasury equity and AI-infrastructure equity.

Research Gaps

• Primary SEC EDGAR retrieval of the BitMine 13G (filed ~July 15, 2025) and the later 13G/A to confirm exact share counts, percentages, and the reduction’s filing date and proceeds (reporting above is from tier-2 outlets describing the filings).
• Founders Fund’s specific dollar check within the June 2025 $250M placement (only the resulting position is disclosed).
• Whether the FF Consumer Growth II vintage that holds BitMine is the same vehicle that participated in Crusoe Series E (Crusoe round announcements do not name the FF fund vintage).

Related Entries

• founders-fund
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• 2025-10-24–crusoe-series-e-mubadala-capital-valor-co-lead
• thiel-surveillance-empire-2003-2026-twenty-three-year-vertical-integration
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