Written by: Logan Hitchcock
Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News
Tom Lee, Chairman of BitMine. Image credit: André Beganski/Decrypt
Key takeaways:
BitMine Chairman Tom Lee believes that Ethereum has bottomed out this year.
Lee's company, the world's largest Ethereum treasury, increased its holdings of Ethereum by $460 million last week, putting its views into practice.
Lee stated that Ethereum is expected to remain strong until the end of the year; and that he is more optimistic about Ethereum's development prospects than Bitcoin over the next 10 to 15 years.
Tom Lee believes that Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, has bottomed out after recently falling below the $3,000 mark.
The chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies (who also serves as the chief investment officer of Fundstrat) said that the Ethereum treasury company is proving its point by significantly increasing its holdings of Ethereum at current prices.
"BitMine believes the price of Ethereum has bottomed out," Lee said in a video interview with Farokh Sarmad, president of Dastan, the parent company of Decrypt. "We are now buying more than double the amount of Ethereum compared to two weeks ago."
This Ethereum treasury company has recently significantly increased its holdings of the asset – purchasing 138,452 ETH last week, worth approximately $460 million.
This is BitMine's largest purchase since it acquired more than 200,000 Ethereum in October, and the company's goal is to hold 5% of the circulating supply of Ethereum.
As of Wednesday, BitMine held approximately 3.864 million Ethereum, representing 3.2% of the circulating supply, with a market capitalization of $12.85 billion. Currently, the company is the largest holder of Ethereum reserves among publicly traded companies and ranks second among all cryptocurrency treasury firms—behind only Strategy, which holds over $61 billion in Bitcoin.
In addition, BitMine holds 193 bitcoins (worth approximately $18 million) and $1 billion in cash.
Although both Bitcoin and Ethereum prices have retreated from their all-time highs, Ethereum has recently led the rebound: it has risen by about 8% in the past 7 days and is currently trading at $3,376; while Bitcoin's price has been basically flat over the past week, with a recent trading price of $92,248.
The BitMine executive (BitMine's stock ticker is BMNR) said he believes both assets are likely to experience significant volatility before the end of the year.
Previously, Lee had predicted that Bitcoin could rise to as high as $150,000 by the end of 2025; however, due to Bitcoin's price remaining below $100,000 in the last week of November, his stance softened, saying that Bitcoin "might" still reach that goal.
Regardless, Lee and BitMine are more optimistic about Ethereum's development over the next 10 to 15 years—especially given Wall Street's acceptance of this Layer-1 blockchain network and its recognition of its future role in the financial sector.
"Our reason for being bullish on Ethereum is that Wall Street is choosing to use its blockchain for future development," Lee said. "This trend started with stablecoins—a significant 'epiphany' for Wall Street… But stablecoins are just tokenizing the dollar. Now, Wall Street wants to tokenize all assets, and they won't do that with Bitcoin—because they need a smart contract platform."
This view aligns with that of Larry Fink and Rob Goldstei, executives at global investment giant BlackRock, who stated last week that tokenization is "the next major evolution in market infrastructure."
Ethereum is leading the way in this trend: According to data from RWA.xyz, the tokenized real-world assets (RWA) hosted on Ethereum have reached $12.1 billion, accounting for nearly 66% of the total distributed assets.
