Source: Bankless; Compiled by Golden Finance. Note: Ethereum treasury company BitMine has been a hot topic on Wall Street in the past month or two. On August 6, 2025, Bankless interviewed BitMine Chairman Tom Lee. Tom Lee discussed BitMine's goal of purchasing 5% of the total ETH supply, the reasons behind the rise of Ethereum treasuries, who is buying into Ethereum treasuries, the source of the mNAV premium for crypto treasury companies, why the price of ETH remains below $4,000 despite the ETH treasury's massive purchases, ETH's price forecast for the end of 2025, and whether there is a bubble in crypto treasuries. Regarding price, which is of particular concern, Tom Lee believes ETH is experiencing a similar moment to BTC in 2017, when Wall Street began to support ETH and that ETH will experience step-change growth similar to Bitcoin's over the past five years. He also made a price prediction for ETH: In the short term, ETH should rebound to at least $4,000, and it's reasonable to see it reach $7,000, or even $12,000 or $15,000 before the end of 2025. This translation by Golden Finance is for readers' reference.
BitMine Quickly Acquires 830,000 ETH
Bankless: On this podcast, we're joined by Tom Lee, legendary Wall Street investor and chairman of the newly formed ETH treasury company, BitMine. I honestly didn't expect Tom Lee to be creating an ETH treasury company in 2025. BitMine now holds 833,000 ETH, nearly 1% of the total ETH supply. BitMine is the world's largest publicly traded ETH treasury. How do you feel about that?
Tom Lee: We moved very quickly, as BitMine announced the deal on June 30th and completed the transaction on July 8th. In the 27 calendar days since the transaction closed, we moved at a very high speed to acquire this ETH.
I think this is significant because MicroStrategy has already demonstrated a 30x return. MicroStrategy's pivot occurred in August 2020, when its stock price was $13, while Bitcoin soared from $11,000 to $120,000 today, but its treasury strategy delivered a 20x return on top of that. That's how it achieved a total 30x return. Ethereum is one of the biggest macro trades of the next decade. So we wanted to act quickly because we wanted to get as much ETH as possible at $3,500 or other prices before it experienced a step-change increase like Bitcoin has over the past five years. The Rise of Ethereum Treasury Companies Bankless: Unlike MicroStrateg, when you launched BitMine and announced your ETH treasury strategy, other ETH treasury companies followed suit, like Joseph Lubin's Sharpink Gaming. Now there are a whole host of ETH treasury companies. Are you aware of other companies following suit? What's going on? Why does it all seem to be happening at the same time? Tom Lee: Perhaps great minds think alike. For a long time, there were only Bitcoin treasury companies, and then there were a few Solana treasuries and Hype treasuries. Sharplink was the first Ethereum treasury company, announced in May. We were after SharpLink, so we're a bit behind. I think Ethereum itself makes a lot of sense as a treasury. First, if you're positive on ETH itself, then that's the reason to implement an Ethereum treasury. Especially relative to an ETF, a treasury strategy allows you to accumulate more ETH. Second, because of ETH staking and proof-of-stake, these treasury companies are essentially infrastructure companies. In return, they earn native staking returns, making them real businesses. For example, BitMine currently holds over $3 billion in ETH and earns over 3% in native staking returns, which is essentially net income. Third, creating scarcity is important. BitMine's story is one of scarcity. We have a very clear strategy to acquire 5% of ETH. We have a pristine balance sheet, which is a significant advantage. Furthermore, the stock is very liquid. BitMine's daily trading volume is $1.6 billion, making it the 42nd most liquid stock in the US stock market today. In fact, BitMine's daily trading volume is comparable to that of Uber. While BitMine's market cap is approximately $4 billion, Uber's is $184 billion.
5% Ethereum Supply Target
Bankless: Let's talk about that 5% number. 5% of the total ETH supply is approximately 6 million ETH. You moved very, very quickly, reaching 833,000 in about four weeks. Is BitMine serious about 5%? 5% of ETH is approximately $20 billion at current market prices. How exactly do you get to 5%? Do you have an execution plan to reach that 5%? If so, what is it?
Tom Lee: MicroStrategy currently holds 3.2% of the circulating BTC supply. MicroStrategy wants to reach at least one million Bitcoins, which is approximately 5%. Remember, once MicroStrategy holds one million Bitcoins, they have a sovereign put option. They are strategically important to the Bitcoin ecosystem. What I mean is, if the US wanted to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, it would probably be difficult for them to buy a million Bitcoins on the open market because once they announced it, sellers would decrease and Bitcoin would likely immediately rise to $1 million. MicroStrategy might be an easier way for someone/a country to acquire a million Bitcoins. I call it a sovereign put option. MicroStrategy achieved 3% over 5 years. So they've essentially been buying 16 cents worth of Bitcoin per share every day for the past 5 years. BitMine has been adding about 80 cents to $1 per share of Ethereum per day since its inception. That's about 12 times the speed of MicroStrategy. So we're on track to achieve 5% at 12 times the speed of MicroStrategy. But that makes sense because everything BitMine does is 100% legally compliant. Ethereum is a legally compliant blockchain. Everything BitMine does is keep every aspect of its operations in the United States. Therefore, it aligns perfectly with the entities Wall Street and the US government want to see staking significant amounts of ETH. Equally important, ETH itself will be where the majority of Wall Street's on-chain financialization will occur. Someone on Twitter made the point that Wall Street betting on ETH is like gamers/gaming companies buying into Nvidia. This is exactly what Wall Street is thinking: if Wall Street is going to tokenize real-world assets, from money markets to dollars to stocks, they're going to want to own ETH itself, and they're going to want the person staking ETH to actually be an entity genuinely trying to advance Ethereum's goals. So I think BitMine plays a significant role by staking ETH. Bankless: Tom, if BitMine's current growth rate is 12 times that of MicroStrategy, it would essentially reach 5% within one to two years, which would be an astonishing rate. Do you think there's a similar sovereign put option for Ethereum, as there is for Bitcoin? What if the US government or another sovereign nation comes to you one day and says, "Hey, BitMine, we noticed you have a lot of ETH. We'd like to buy some for the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve and put it on our balance sheet. We know you have a lot. Can we do an over-the-counter transaction?" Do you think this is a possibility? Tom Lee: What you just said is actually quite rational and makes sense. But BitMine's goal isn't to have a put option. If Wall Street, the Genius Act, and the SEC want to move the financial system onto a blockchain, and Ethereum is the largest blockchain, it complies with US law and is a legally recognized blockchain. Ethereum can certainly be used by other countries. The US clearly wants to strengthen its position and dominance in Ethereum. Remember, there's more to Ethereum than just this narrative. There's also AI. If you're going to tokenize things, whether it's robots or something else, you want a blockchain that can be protected. So, the tech industry and Wall Street are converging on Ethereum. Do Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan want Ethereum held in millions of different wallets? It's not that they're trying to centralize it, but they want to ensure that staking is done in a compliant manner. Not everyone will choose to do that. That's what we've said from the beginning: BitMine has a super clean balance sheet, no fancy capital structure, and that's true of everything we do. We haven't announced BitMine's staking solution yet, but we're taking our time considering it, because $3 billion in ETH is a big decision. But it will also be fully compliant with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), how the US wants staking to be done. This just goes to show you that Ethereum treasury companies are critical infrastructure. It's more than just a money management game. In return, you at least get staking returns, but they can also generate income in other ways. So, these Ethereum treasury companies are more than just an alternative to an Ethereum ETF. They play a very important role in the Ethereum ecosystem. ETH Treasury bought so much ETH, why is the price still below $4,000? Bankless: Tom, one thing I'm confused about, and some ETH bulls are confused about it, is that when your Ethereum Treasury bought $3 billion in ETH in a month, why is ETH still trading below $4,000? Where did all that ETH come from? Why didn't it drive the price up? Tom Lee: I really don't want to go into too much detail, because as you can imagine, we're probably one of the largest buyers of ETH. I would say that where the fair value of Ethereum is doesn't affect ETH's short-term trajectory. Last week, ETH dropped to $3,300 because some people had liquidation levels, or people were doing pair trading, or people who thought Ethereum was a dead chain were betting on another chain and trying to force liquidations. I think that's the recent dynamic. I think ETH is experiencing the same moment BTC had in 2017 this year, with Wall Street finally starting to support ETH. BTC was at $1,000 at the beginning of 2017, and by August it was skyrocketing. We definitely haven't seen this much Wall Street interest in ETH and the Ethereum network in four or five years. We're seeing Wall Street interest from all corners of the Ethereum ecosystem. Who's buying into Ethereum Treasury companies? Bankless: Compared to BTC treasuries like MicroStrategy, Hype Treasury, and Ethena Treasury, what's the appeal of ETH Treasury companies? Why choose to buy into ETH Treasury companies? Tom Lee: First of all, I'm a huge fan of Bitcoin. I believe Bitcoin is the future. My research at Fundstrat suggests that BTC could reach $1 million to $1.5 million per coin. So, Bitcoin still has a huge story to tell. But Bitcoin and Ethereum operate differently in terms of how the world is financialized. To me, that's a key difference, because Ethereum represents the financialization of the world on the blockchain, which is not Bitcoin's goal. The AI world is creating a digitally native way to connect the real world and digital security. That's why some people want to own an Ethereum Treasury. An Ethereum Treasury is effectively the only way for US stock investors to gain exposure to Ethereum, unless they buy ETH directly or through an ETH ETF. If you're an institution, and this is one of the biggest themes, institutions can't really buy an Ethereum ETF because it's not within the fund's parameters. So, professional investors in the US stock market see an Ethereum Treasury as the only way to gain macro exposure to ETH. That's why Cathie Woods and Bill Miller made significant investments in BitMine. They're institutional investors. Both of these individuals are crypto OGs, and they realized this was the best way to gain macro exposure to Ethereum. Where does the mNAV premium come from? Bankless: In addition to the mNAV premium, Ethereum Treasury companies have some additional tools like the DeFi ecosystem that Ethereum Treasury companies can actually leverage. What strategies do you have for accumulating more ETH? Tom Lee: You ask a great question, and I have many answers. Most of them I can't share because any strategy we pursue is proprietary. However, investors shouldn't oversimplify their thinking about treasury companies, as BitMine has become the third-largest crypto treasury company in the world, behind Mara Blockchain and MicroStrategy. So we own more cryptocurrencies than MetaPlanet. Bankless: Tom, why does the mNAV premium exist? I've heard some investors discuss this, and their basic view is that the mNAV premium should collapse around 1, and in a bear market it could go below 1. But why does any cryptocurrency treasury company initially have an mNAV premium? Tom Lee: I want to start with the numbers. BitMine owns $3 billion in Ethereum. Let's say you're just an ETF with a 1x NAV. But with a 3% native yield and a market cap at 20x the 3% yield, that adds 0.6 to the NAV. So, mNAV is already 1.6 due to ETH staking. There are two other components: a speed premium and a liquidity premium. 1. Speed premium. When BitMine began its Ethereum strategy on July 8th, it held only $4 worth of Ethereum per share. On July 27th, it held $23 worth of Ethereum per share, a $19 increase in approximately 20 days. It's even higher today, though we haven't disclosed it yet. BitMine is 12 times the size of MicroStrategy. So you have to give a speed multiple to NAV growth. Second, a liquidity premium. MicroStrategy trades approximately $3 billion per day, while BitMine is the second most liquid crypto treasury company, trading $1.6 billion daily. This also warrants a premium. So, BitMine's current mNAV is around 1.6. Bankless: Let me ask a question about speed. Speed comes from liquidity. The question is where does the liquidity come from? How can we get more liquidity? Tom Lee: It's probably a team synergy. First, I'm the chairman of BitMine. Bitmine's primary investors are private equity firms, led by MOZAYYX, a very well-known and very smart macro hedge fund. We were able to attract investors like Stanley Druckenmiller, the founder of Founders Fund, and Bill Miller. The biggest blue-chip names in the traditional markets and VC world are backing BitMine. Secondly, I've been a long-time supporter of cryptocurrency. As early as 2017, I strongly advocated for Wall Street to take an interest in Bitcoin. Ethereum is now experiencing its 2017 moment. I think this is logical for those who understand us. I'm very supportive of what people like Lubin of SharpLink and Andrew Keys of Ether Machine are doing because we're all working on the same thing. We're all working to stake Ethereum and make it a secure, American blockchain. We're all working towards the same goal. In the wild west of DeFi, stability and innovation are everything. Ethereum's 2017 Moment Bankless: You compared ETH to BTC in 2017. What was Bitcoin like in 2017? How does it parallel Ethereum today? Tom Lee: I'd love to give you a little background on Fundstrat's journey in 2017. Fundstrat is a macro and thematic firm. We write about big story arcs, also known as narrative arcs, which led us to Bitcoin, where we did two different pieces of research. One was Millennials. The oldest Millennials in 2017 were in their twenties. We realized they would be a huge driver of the US economy. Our work on Millennials was so compelling that we ended up partnering with Snapchat on several white papers discussing how Millennials would be a demographic you needed to monetize. Snapchat was trying to convince advertisers to target Gen Z and Millennials with specific ads. The second was that we noticed Bitcoin. When I was at JPMorgan, it was $100, and then suddenly it went to $1,000 in early 2017. So Fundstrat spent months trying to understand Bitcoin. I found it was driven by two very explicable factors. First, 97% of Bitcoin's rise from $100 to $1,000 was driven by the number of wallets and the activity within each wallet. It's essentially a network value effect. We can simply say that over the next few years, if more people adopt Bitcoin, it will grow exponentially again. So we think it will reach $25,000 by 2022. But if it reaches 5% to 10% of the value of gold, it could even reach $100,000. We began to really push the narrative: Wall Street needs to understand Bitcoin because it's digital gold. We were the first Wall Street firm to market it to institutions. In 2017, 0% of institutions owned Bitcoin. For the past eight years, the biggest narrative around Bitcoin has been digital gold and a store of value. Our research at the time showed that gold was primarily owned by baby boomers. Millennials will own Bitcoin just as baby boomers own gold. It's a generational story, and also a wealth replacement story. That's the backstory. I've done a lot of webinars. But Fundstrat actually lost institutional clients, and the number of paying clients actually declined, because they thought we were completely crazy. They said, "How can you recommend something that's only used by drug dealers and dark web people? And you say it's a legitimate asset class?" So Fundstrat's reputation actually suffered. Bitcoin is now $120,000, a 120-fold increase. Clients who followed our recommendation and allocated 1% to 2% in BTC now have BTC representing almost 100% of their portfolio value. This is also happening with Ethereum today, because Ethereum was once a somewhat dormant chain. People want faster networks or newer ways to validate, but Ethereum hasn't had downtime in ten years. That's what matters to Wall Street. Wall Street has decided that Ethereum is the chain they're going to build on, and it's even cheaper than it was five years ago. Bankless: Does Wall Street understand that Ethereum is the backbone of a lot of the movements going on? Is this the reason for the incredible tailwinds behind ETH Treasury? Or is it just a fabricated narrative? Tom Lee: Wall Street only understands after it starts making money. Nvidia is a great example. It's an exponential growth stock. But you know, there have been times when Nvidia hasn't moved at all for a year and is practically dead money, or Palantir has been dead money for years, and then all of a sudden there's a step function. The market suddenly realizes, "Oh, wait a minute. Not only do I understand, we have to reprice." That's what's happening with Ethereum right now, as on-chain activity has surged to all-time highs. The Ethereum community has been reenergized, and the price has certainly recovered, with more people using Ethereum. And the benefits of the genius bill for smart contract blockchains are obvious, and it's also good for Bitcoin, but Bitcoin won't support stablecoins. Is it a bad thing that Ethereum isn't at $15,000 today? I've seen that happen. We recommended Tesla and Nvidia, which have been surefire winners in Fundstrat Capital's ETFs since 2019 and have been in the research portfolio for a long time. They don't track revenue; they move in steps. I think the same is true for Ethereum. I hope Ethereum stays at its current price for five years because it means we can buy it at a more attractive price. If ETH were $17,000, it would be much more expensive for Ethereum Treasury to buy ETH. Of course, their stock price would benefit. But to me, it's actually a good thing that it's at its current price. ETH Price Prediction: 100x Potential Bankless: So just like Wall Street didn't understand Bitcoin in 2017, Wall Street still won't understand Ethereum as an asset in 2025. Maybe they're starting to understand. In 2017, when you first told Wall Street, Bitcoin was around $3,000, and now Ethereum is $3,000. You're predicting some very high prices. These prices, at least in traditional finance, are astonishing. Do you think ETH can do something similar to Bitcoin? What's your price prediction for Ethereum? Tom Lee: I actually think Ethereum has more upside. There was more skepticism initially. Bitcoin wasn't necessarily something people shorted. They just didn't believe in it. When we wrote in 2017 about BTC hitting $100,000, it seemed crazy. But from 2017 to now, it hasn't taken that long for it to go up 100x. Ethereum is like Bitcoin in 2017. Wall Street isn't professionally convinced that Ethereum is even a viable chain, and there are some fair criticisms. For example, 1. Ethereum migrated to proof-of-stake; 2. Too much ETH was released for a while, but that's being addressed; 3. There's still some skepticism on Wall Street about whether they'll build on Ethereum, whether they'll stake ETH, or even use it; and 4. The perception is that Ethereum is a Layer 2 story, and that Layer 2 doesn't offer any benefits for Layer 1. These are all notions that will be shattered, and when they do, the price of ETH will be a step function. So I think ETH's upside is actually 100x greater than Bitcoin's. If Bitcoin goes up 100x, Ethereum can also go up 100x. Luben has this upside in mind, too, because Luben and I have been communicating constantly, and we're truly partners in promoting the ETH treasury as a digital infrastructure. I think it's possible, and there's a very high probability that Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin in terms of network value. If someone believes Bitcoin can reach $1 million, imagine what that means for Ethereum. Because Ethereum isn't just Wall Street's financialization of blockchain, but also a focal point in the US debate about AI dominance. Ethereum plays a strategic role here. If MicroStrategy's upside is three times that of Bitcoin, then the theoretical upside for Ethereum treasuries could be three times that of Ethereum itself. So, you wouldn't say Ethereum treasuries aren't a good investment class. If you look at what BitMine is doing that's different, that's why they should do well, because Ethereum itself is undervalued. Bankless: Some of your predictions might be surprising, even in the cryptocurrency community. Ethereum could rise 100x to around $40 trillion, and you say it could potentially surpass Bitcoin. This isn't a mainstream view among the crypto native community, although many ETH supporters have long held this view. Where do you think the price of Ethereum will be by the end of this year or at the end of this cycle? Tom Lee: In the short term, the price people should be thinking about is whether ETH can reach $4,000. Because the Ethereum story is better than it was in December 2024, and it would be $4,000 by then. We should at least get back to the $4,000 level. The Ethereum story is better today than it was a year ago, when ETH/BTC was $0.05. At $0.05, ETH should be $6,000. A lot of things can happen between now and the end of the year, including other Ethereum treasuries starting to buy Ethereum and Bitcoin rising. So I think it's not unreasonable for ETH to reach $7,000, or even $12,000 or $15,000, by the end of 2025. In 2026, the Fed starts to turn dovish, so central bank liquidity is rising, and ETH should continue to build around these price levels by the end of 2025. I don't know if there are crypto cycles, but there should be. This works in our favor, because I personally believe an Ethereum treasury would want the ETH price to remain flat for the next five years and then rise significantly. But that probably won't happen. It's likely to be a step function. How to Value ETH? Bankless: Tom, how do you analyze ETH's value and price? Tom Lee: Crypto treasury companies are valued based on their balance sheet assets. MicroStrategy's valuation is actually based on its balance sheet, not its profitability. From 1990 to 2018, an entire generation of one's career, ExxonMobil was a top-five company in the S&P 500 by market capitalization. There were dot-com booms and so on, but ExxonMobil was always in the top five. It was never valued based on earnings. It was always priced based on proven reserves. So crypto treasury companies are the new ExxonMobil. When I worked on Wall Street, I learned that it takes a lot of PE to offset the E. People spend too much time on the E. But it's always about the PE. ETH's price isn't based on current transactions recorded in any given week. It's actually a sense of what it will be in five years. Bankless: So how do you estimate the size of this market? Do you call Ethereum digital oil, and is that a way of talking about its ceiling? Tom Lee: The "ETH is Digital Oil" report is really well done. I know the Mosaics team also helped build two models for Ethereum: one is essentially a banking system proxy model, and the other is a payment proxy model. Ultimately, if there's one thing I've learned in the stock market, it's that you can't be bound by a rigid framework. That's the mistake people make. I'm not opposed to trying to build frameworks. But to me, ETH at $3,600 is a bit ridiculously undervalued.
Crypto Treasury Companies Are Far From a Bubble
Bankless: Tom, do you think at some point these crypto treasury companies will get a little overheated? Is it possible to enter bubble territory? Will they become overinflated, and the premiums become reflexive, and then suddenly come down like an elevator, with more systemic consequences for cryptocurrencies and the broader economy? Is that something you're worried about?
Tom Lee: A bubble only really forms when everyone is bullish.
The only way a crypto treasury company can get into trouble is if they use leverage. Anyone who does fancy debt structures with instruments, unless they're scarce—MicroStrategy can do a lot because they changed the world. Same thing with MetaPlanet. Those that aren't scarce are the ones that get into trouble. But most crypto treasury companies are pretty ordinary. What happens then? Their prices just go down. But I don't think it's going to cause a stock market crash. Stock market crashes are usually about a debt problem or an exogenous shock. We are far from a bubble. In fact, the market is betting that they are already oversupplied, so they will only rise if Bitcoin rises.
Catherine
Kikyo
Anais
Weatherly