A new Ethereum whale rises, revealing why Wall Street's renowned strategist Tom Lee has turned to crypto assets?

On Wall Street, Thomas Jong Lee, known as the "Wall Street Bull" and commonly referred to as Tom Lee, is a well-known stock market strategist, research director, and financial commentator in the United States. He is famous for his data-driven research style, which does not cater to market pressures, and has successfully predicted macro market trends multiple times. However, this strategist, who has been deeply involved in the TradFi sector for many years, has recently firmly turned to Crypto Assets, particularly Ethereum (ETH), even personally taking charge of BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) to push its transformation towards an enterprise-level Ethereum reserve structure. What exactly has led this seasoned Wall Street player to develop such a strong interest in Crypto Assets and foresee the immense potential of Ethereum?

Tom Lee's Wall Street Career and Independent Research Style

Tom Lee's Wall Street career began in the 1990s, working at Kidder Peabody and Salomon Smith Barney. He joined JPMorgan in 1999 and served as the firm's Chief Equity Strategist from 2007 until his departure in 2014. During his tenure, he gained media attention for his repeatedly optimistic market views and was also embroiled in industry controversies for his adherence to critical research.

In 2002, Lee, as a telecommunications analyst at JPMorgan, published a research report on the wireless operator Nextel, questioning the validity of its accounting practices, which provoked a strong backlash from the company. Despite facing immense pressure, JPMorgan's internal investigation ultimately confirmed that Lee had not engaged in any wrongdoing. This incident became a representative conflict in Lee's career and established his research style of adhering to a data-driven approach, not succumbing to market and investment banking client pressures.

In 2014, Lee co-founded the independent research institution Fundstrat Global Advisors and served as the head of research, successfully transforming from a traditional investment banking strategist to a leader of an independent research institution. He was one of the first Wall Street strategists to incorporate Bitcoin into mainstream valuation frameworks. In 2017, Lee published a report titled "A framework for valuing bitcoin as a substitute for gold," where he first proposed that Bitcoin has the potential to partially replace gold as a store of value. He also used the number of independent Bitcoin addresses based on Metcalfe's Law as a proxy for users to predict its price trends.

Lee's research style emphasizes data-driven analysis and historical analogies, particularly excelling in medium to long-term trend forecasting. In March 2020, when the pandemic triggered a global market crash, Lee was one of the earliest strategists to predict a "V-shaped recovery," firmly advising investors to increase their positions while prices were low. In May 2021, after Bitcoin had sharply corrected from a high of $60,000 to the $30,000 range and briefly rebounded, Lee was interviewed by CNBC's "TechCheck" program, reiterating his view initially presented in December 2020 that Bitcoin would break through $100,000 by the end of the year. He stated, "Bitcoin is inherently extremely volatile, but it is this volatility that creates opportunities for returns," and added, "Even if Bitcoin is currently in a cold storage, I still believe it can break through $100,000 by the end of the year." Furthermore, as early as 2019, Lee had advised ordinary investors on CNBC to allocate 1% to 2% of their assets into Bitcoin, to which the host responded in surprise, "That sounds a bit crazy." This segment later spread widely, becoming a representative moment of his steadfast position on Bitcoin.

In his career, Lee also experienced critical judgment errors. These setbacks prompted him to pay more attention to cyclical indicators and the structure of capital flow, establishing his research style anchored in historical data. Lee has been actively involved in mainstream financial programs such as CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNN, serving as a guest commentator and market strategy analyst on CNBC's "Fast Money," "TechCheck," "Halftime Report," and "Closing Bell" for many years. He has attracted the attention of investors for his insistence on independent viewpoints and his successful predictions of macro market trends. During the significant decline of the U.S. stock market in 2022, Lee maintained a bullish judgment and suggested mid-year that the market had bottomed out, a view that was later confirmed by subsequent trends. Hence, he is referred to as a representative of the contrarian optimistic faction in the "Wall of Worry." Currently, Tom Lee also serves as an investment strategy advisor at NewEdge Wealth, continuing to share cutting-edge insights in the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets.

Strategic Layout: Taking Charge of BitMine, Advancing the Ethereum Financial Model

In June 2025, Lee was appointed as the Chairman of the Board of BitMine Immersion Technologies (NASDAQ: BMNR), beginning his involvement in the company’s strategic transition from traditional mining to an enterprise-level Ethereum (ETH) reserve structure. BitMine is a digital asset infrastructure company headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, originally focused on Bitcoin mining, utilizing immersion cooling technology to enhance energy efficiency and computing power stability, and is dedicated to building a high-performance, low-cost blockchain computing platform.

In the month of appointment, the company completed a PIPE private financing, issuing 55,555,556 shares of common stock and related securities, priced at $4.50 per share, raising a total of $250 million, and subsequently submitted an S-3 ASR automatic registration statement to initiate an ATM (at-the-market offering) program of up to $2 billion, with Cantor Fitzgerald and ThinkEquity acting as sales agents, and the funds will be used to build ETH financial reserves.

As of mid-July, the company revealed that its total holding of ETH reached 300,657 coins, with a market value exceeding 1 billion USD, including about 60,000 real-value options backed by 200 million USD in cash. Lee stated that the company is progressing towards the goal of "acquiring and staking 5% of the total supply of Ethereum."

Subsequently, Founders Fund revealed that it holds a 9.1% stake in BMNR, and ARK Invest also purchased 4,773,444 shares of BMNR stock through an OTC agreement, with a transaction amount of approximately 182 million USD, and announced that all will be converted into ETH reserves to support the company's strategy.

In late July, BMNR launched options trading, further enhancing the liquidity of its stocks. The latest disclosures show that BitMine's ETH holdings have increased to 566,776 coins, with a market value exceeding 2 billion USD, nearly 8 times the initial amount of PIPE, making it one of the publicly listed companies with the largest amount of ETH in the world.

Tom Lee: Stablecoins Drive Ethereum to Become the Institutional Choice

In a recent interview with Amit Kukreja and CoinDesk, Tom Lee expressed his strong optimism for the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly driven by the trends of stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). He pointed out that the rise of stablecoins constitutes the "ChatGPT moment of the crypto space," with the global stablecoin market cap exceeding $250 billion, of which over 50% of issuance and about 30% of gas fees occur on the Ethereum network. As stablecoins gain support from the U.S. Treasury and Wall Street, Ethereum is gradually becoming a key infrastructure connecting crypto with TradFi.

As the Chairman of the BitMine Board, Lee pointed out that compared to ETF or on-chain custody models, Ethereum-based financial listed companies have five structural advantages:

You can purchase ETH through the issuance of additional shares when the stock price is higher than the net asset value, achieving a reflexive uplift in the net asset value (NAV) per share;

It is possible to combine tools such as issuing convertible bonds and selling options to hedge volatility, achieving low-cost or even zero-cost positions while reducing financing costs.

The ability to acquire other on-chain financial companies, thereby further amplifying NAV leverage;

Expand ETH staking, DeFi yields, on-chain infrastructure and other businesses to build a sustainable cash flow source;

Once its ETH holdings occupy a central position in the on-chain ecosystem, or become a key node in the stablecoin payment and settlement network, it will have a status similar to a "sovereign put" and may become a strategic asset prioritized for acquisition by financial institutions.

Lee emphasized that as platforms like Robinhood launch stock tokenization services through Ethereum Layer 2, more and more institutions are beginning to embrace compliant and scalable blockchain platforms, with Ethereum being the only main chain that currently meets regulatory adaptability, ecological maturity, and scale effects.

In an interview with CoinDesk, he summarized: "Stablecoins have brought about an explosion in the crypto industry similar to ChatGPT. Wall Street is looking for a chain that can support real assets and comply with regulations, and Ethereum is becoming that intersection." Fundstrat analysts have set a short-term technical target for ETH at $4,000, believing its fair value by the end of the year could reach $10,000 to $15,000. Lee stated: "Allocating ETH at the current price is an effective way for corporate finance to achieve 10 times the potential."

Tom Lee's transformation from a traditional Wall Street strategist to an Ethereum whale is not only an evolution of his personal investment philosophy but also a microcosm of the increasing status of crypto assets, particularly Ethereum, in the mainstream financial world. His insights into stablecoins and RWA, as well as his analysis of the structural advantages of Ethereum-based publicly listed companies, provide us with a new perspective on the future integration of finance and blockchain. Whether Ethereum can become the preferred choice of Wall Street institutions as he expects, and achieve a potential valuation in the million-dollar range, is something we look forward to observing.