ETH is the future

As early as 2017, Tom Lee was one of the few well-dressed men on CNBC willing to openly express optimism about Bitcoin.

Not the kind of statements like “Bitcoin is a tulip frenzy,” nor the “blockchain is important, not Bitcoin” kind. At that time, he advised institutional investors to treat Bitcoin as digital gold—buying in before the world caught on. Back then, this sounded more like a university debate in a fog than a mature strategy. Fundstrat

He even lost some clients because of it.

Keep in mind, Bitcoin was trading around $1,000 at the time, and most people still saw it as a speculative toy or even a nest of criminals. Of course, Lee’s views later became more refined, like fine wine aging…

And now, Lee is back.

This time, he’s no longer preaching about Bitcoin—he’s focusing on Ethereum. Moreover, he now serves as Chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies…

This company bought 833,000 ETH in its first month of operation—close to 1% of the total ETH supply.

Their goal?

To ultimately accumulate 5% of the total Ethereum supply. Based on current market prices, that’s about $20 billion.

Lee says: “Our pace is 12 times faster than MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin purchases. Ethereum’s treasury isn’t just an ETF; it’s infrastructure.”

Next, we’ll break down what this means… and why Lee’s approach might turn Wall Street’s skepticism about cryptocurrencies into genuine belief.

Why Lee is bullish on Ethereum

Of course, Lee still believes Bitcoin will eventually rise above $1 million.

But in his view, Bitcoin is digital gold… while Ethereum is the on-chain process transforming the entire banking system—an infrastructure that’s compliant and legitimate on Wall Street.

Look at all the recent major headlines in the crypto industry:

Circle’s IPO

Coinbase’s “super app” strategy

JPMorgan integrating with Coinbase

Robinhood promoting tokenized assets

Legislation on stablecoins…

All built on Ethereum.

The reason MicroStrategy has made waves is because of one move: buying and holding Bitcoin. But Lee believes the tools provided by the ETH treasury strategy go far beyond that:

🔹 Native Yield

Ethereum staking offers about 3% annual rewards. If you hold $3 billion worth of ETH, these staking rewards are income that can be recorded without selling the principal.

🔹 Scarcity

If Bitmine locks up 5% of the entire network’s ETH, it means a 5% reduction in circulating supply.

🔹 Velocity

This refers to how quickly each share can increase ETH holdings. MicroStrategy adds about $0.16 worth of Bitcoin per share daily, for four years straight. Bitmine is increasing ETH at a maximum of $1 per share per day. Theoretically, this faster stacking speed implies higher valuation multiples.

🔹 Liquidity

Bitmine’s daily trading volume reaches $1.6 billion—about the same as Uber, but its market cap is only $4 billion.

This liquidity means lower financing costs and faster growth.

🔹 Demand-Side Integration

Owning ETH and becoming a validator means you’re directly connected to Ethereum’s settlement and security layer.

You can also earn fees from other services (like oracles, sequencers, custody services, etc.).

It’s like not only owning a toll road but also operating the gas stations, rest areas, and billboards along the route—more monetization options from the same traffic flow.

In summary, when you combine native yield, scarcity, velocity, liquidity, and demand-side integration, you create a value-driven mechanism far beyond traditional ETFs. The recent $15,000–$20,000 shockwave

In Lee’s view, today’s Ethereum is like Bitcoin in 2017—misunderstood, undervalued, and about to be re-priced. He believes:

$4,000 is the floor—just a return to last December’s high;

$6,000 is a “reasonable valuation” relative to Bitcoin;

$7,000 to $15,000 is a realistic range over the next 12–18 months—assuming Wall Street awakens.

His reasoning is based on:

Ethereum being the infrastructure layer for Wall Street, AI, asset tokenization, and even future sovereign blockchain reserves.

If he’s correct:

Then Bitmine’s approach—scarcity, yield, velocity—will become a new paradigm template for Wall Street to reassess crypto assets.

A major revaluation is imminent

This has happened before. Wall Street always misses each wave of the new era until a “rule breaker” redraws the map.

In the late 1990s, analysts, to be “conservative,” valued Amazon as a traditional retailer—its stock was called “overvalued” at the time. But Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker introduced a new framework: viewing Amazon as a network-effect internet platform, not just an online bookstore. She was right. Her 1998 report completely changed Wall Street’s perception.

By 2013, Wall Street made the same mistake again—they saw Tesla as a niche carmaker, ignoring the trillions of dollars in energy transition behind it.

Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood insists: Tesla should be viewed as a tech and energy company, not just an automaker—and that proved to be correct. The same goes for gold. After the US abandoned the gold standard, it took decades for gold to be re-understood as a monetary asset. In the 1970s, “Goldbug” Jim Sinclair popularized the idea that “gold is a hedge against currency risk.”

Now, it’s Ethereum’s turn.

Most of Wall Street still tries to value it with “quarterly cash flow models” or treats it as a commodity priced solely by transaction fees.

Tom Lee believes this is a complete misunderstanding. He says: Ethereum’s value isn’t just from transaction revenue,

but also because it’s scarce, yields, and is being built on by Wall Street itself as a “strategic infrastructure.”

Once institutions realize this—Lee says—the magnitude of this revaluation will rival some of the most significant cognitive shifts in history.

A major transformation

In Tom Lee’s Ethereum treasury model, the crypto narrative is completely reversed.

It’s no longer: “What’s the hot narrative today?”

But: “How much productive capacity do you control? How much yield does it generate? How fast are you expanding that share? How strong is your position’s liquidity?”

This is essentially how Wall Street views pipelines, power grids, and telecom companies—

Assets with three common traits:

Scarcity

Sustainable yield potential

High replication costs

In such a world:

ETH is the settlement layer

Solana might be the high-speed rail

DePIN projects are the physical infrastructure connecting endpoints

Even long-criticized governance tokens, if they control truly cash-flowing infrastructure, will be revalued.

Of course, the meme era won’t disappear—after all, we’re talking about the “Internet world.”

But for more and more people:

Tokens will no longer be just “Disney tokens” (pure entertainment), but will be seen as the “monetization layer” of 21st-century digital infrastructure. **$6 **