This Crypto Stock Is Soaring. Peter Thiel Just Made a Big Bet.

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is among the world’s richest people, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. (Marco Bello/Getty Images)

Shares of crypto mining service provider BitMine Immersion Technologies soared early Wednesday after one of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech titans built a large stake in the company.

Billionaire venture capitalist and Palantir Technologies and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel disclosed late Tuesday a 9.1% stake in BitMine, which is building up its crypto holdings focusing on Ether . BitMine recently disclosed it had a total holding of 163,142 coins, worth more than $500 million.

Thiel, the 101st richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, bought 5.09 million shares, or a 9.1% stake, in BitMine through various entities of his venture-capital firm Founders Fund, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed Tuesday.

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1BitMine Immersion TechnologiesSource: FactSet

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BitMine stock was up 17% to $46.91 in mid-day trading Wednesday, after having soared as much as 30% earlier in the premarket. The small-cap has seen gains of more than 400% so far this year.

On July 3 the stock skyrocketed to more than $100 after the company announced that it had raised $250 million in a private placement offering that it would use to buy Ether.

Ether, the native coin on the Ethereum blockchain, was up 6.3% to $3,228 over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data.

Write to Elsa Ohlen at elsa.ohlen@barrons.com