Source: Bankless; Compiled by: Jinse 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 for the rise of Ethereum treasuries, who is buying into Ethereum treasury companies, the source of the mNAV premium for crypto treasury companies, why the ETH price 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 crypto treasury bubble.
Regarding price, which has drawn particular attention, Tom Lee believes ETH is experiencing the same moment as BTC in 2017, with Wall Street beginning to support ETH and predicting a similar step-by-step growth to Bitcoin's performance over the past five years. He also made a price prediction for ETH: ETH should rebound to at least $4,000 in the short term, and a potential price of $7,000, or even $12,000 or $15,000 by the end of 2025 is plausible. This information is compiled by Jinse Finance for your reference.
BitMine quickly bought 830,000 ETH
Bankless: In 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 currently 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 this?
Tom Lee: We acted very quickly because BitMine announced the start on June 30 and completed the transaction on July 8. In the 27 calendar days since the transaction was completed, we acted at a very high speed to quickly obtain these ETH.
I think this is significant because MicroStrategy has demonstrated its 30x return. MicroStrategy's turnaround occurred in August 2020 when its stock price was $13, while Bitcoin surged from $11,000 to $120,000 today, yet its treasury strategy delivered another 20x return on top of that. This is how it achieved a total 30x return.
Ethereum is one of the biggest macro trades of the next decade. So we want to move fast because we want to get as much ETH as possible at $3,500 or whatever price before ETH makes a step-up move like Bitcoin has done over the past 5 years.
The Rise of Ethereum Treasury Companies
Bankless: Unlike MicroStrateg, when you launched BitMine and announced your Ethereum treasury strategy, other Ethereum treasury companies followed suit, like Joseph Lubin's Sharpink Gaming. Now there's a whole slew of Ethereum treasury companies. Are you aware of any 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, then there were a few Solana treasury companies and Hype treasury companies. Sharplink was the first Ethereum treasury company, announced in May. We were after SharpLink, so we're behind.
I think Ethereum itself makes a lot of sense as a treasury.
First, if you are positive on ETH itself, then this is 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 receive native staking returns, making them real businesses. For example, BitMine currently holds over $3 billion in ETH and can earn over 3% in native staking returns, which is essentially net income.
Third, creating scarcity is crucial. The BitMine story is a story of scarcity. We have a very clear strategy to acquire 5% of all 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 roughly the same as Uber's, despite BitMine's market capitalization being around $4 billion and Uber's $184 billion.
5% of Ethereum total 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 worth about $20 billion at the current market price. How exactly do you get to 5%? Do you have an execution plan to achieve that 5%? If so, what is it?
Tom Lee: MicroStrategy currently holds 3.2% of the circulating supply of BTC. MicroStrategy wants to reach at least one million bitcoins, which is about 5%. Remember, once MicroStrategy owns one million bitcoins, they have a sovereign put option. They are strategically important to the Bitcoin ecosystem. I mean, if the United States wanted to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, it might be difficult for them to buy one million bitcoins on the open market because once they announced it, there would be fewer sellers and Bitcoin would likely immediately rise to $1 million. MicroStrategy might be an easier way for someone/a country to acquire one million bitcoins. I call it a sovereign put option.
MicroStrategy achieved 3% in five years. So they've essentially been buying 16 cents per share of Bitcoin every day for the past five years. BitMine has been adding roughly 80 cents to $1 per share of Ethereum every day since its inception. That's about 12 times the pace of MicroStrategy. So we're on track to reach 5% at 12 times the rate of MicroStrategy . But this makes sense, because everything BitMine does is 100% legally compliant. Ethereum is a legally compliant blockchain. BitMine keeps every aspect of its operations in the United States. So it fits perfectly with the expectations of Wall Street and the US government for entities with significant ETH stake. Equally important, ETH itself will be where the majority of Wall Street's on-chain financialization will take place.
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 they're going to tokenize real-world assets, from currency 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 is currently growing at 12 times the rate of MicroStrategy, essentially reaching 5% in one to two years, that would be an astonishing rate. Do you think there's a similar sovereign put option on Ethereum, like there is on Bitcoin? So, what if the US government or another sovereign were to come to you one day and say, "Hey, BitMine, we noticed you have a lot of ETH. We'd like to buy it for the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve and put it on our balance sheet. We know you have a lot of it. Can we do an OTC transaction?" Do you think that's a possibility?
Tom Lee: What you just said is actually rational and reasonable. But BitMine's goal isn't to own a put option. If Wall Street, the Genius Act, and the SEC want to move the financial system onto a blockchain, Ethereum is the largest blockchain. It also 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 one story. There's also AI. If you're going to tokenize, whether it's robots or something else, you want a blockchain that can be secured. 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), the way the US expects staking to be done.
This just goes to show you that the Ethereum Treasury is critical infrastructure. It’s not 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 alternatives to Ethereum ETFs. They play a very important role in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Why is the ETH price still below $4,000 even though ETH Treasury has bought so much?
Bankless: Tom, one thing I'm confused about, and I'm confused by some ETH bulls as well, is that when your Ethereum Treasury bought $3 billion in ETH in a month, why is ETH still trading below $4,000? Where did you get all that ETH? And why didn't it drive the price up?
Tom Lee: I really don't want to say too much, 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 liquidations, 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 a similar moment this year to BTC in 2017 , 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 interest from Wall Street in ETH and the Ethereum network in four or five years. We're seeing Wall Street showing interest from all corners of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Who is buying into Ethereum Treasury?
Bankless: Compared to BTC Treasury companies MicroStrategy, Hype Treasury, and Ethena Treasury, what is the appeal of ETH Treasury? Why choose to buy ETH Treasury?
Tom Lee: First of all, I'm a huge fan of Bitcoin. I think it's the future. My research at Fundstrat suggests that BTC could reach $1 million to $1.5 million per coin. So, there's still a huge story to be told for Bitcoin.
But Bitcoin and Ethereum operate differently in terms of how they financialize the world. To me, this is a major difference because Ethereum represents the financialization of the world on the blockchain , which is not the goal of Bitcoin, while 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 actually buy an Ethereum ETF because it's outside the fund's parameters. So, professional investors in the US stock market see Ethereum treasuries as the only way to gain macro exposure to ETH.
That's why Cathie Woods and Bill Miller made a significant investment in BitMine. They're institutional investors. Both of them are crypto OGs who realized this was the best way to get macro exposure to Ethereum.
Where does the mNAV premium come from?
Bankless: Besides the mNAV premium, the Ethereum Treasury has some additional tools like the DeFi ecosystem that the Ethereum Treasury can actually leverage. What is your strategy for accumulating more ETH?
Tom Lee: You ask a great question, and I have many answers. Most of them I can't share, as any strategy we pursue is proprietary. However, investors shouldn't oversimplify their thinking about treasury companies, as BitMine has become the world's third-largest crypto treasury company, 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 talk about this, and their basic view is that the mNAV premium should collapse around 1, and in a bear market it might go below 1. But why would any cryptocurrency treasury company have an mNAV premium in the first place?
Tom Lee: I want to start with the numbers. BitMine owns $3 billion in Ethereum. Let's say you have 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, due to the ETH staking yield, the mNAV is already 1.6 .
There are two other components: a speed premium and a liquidity premium. 1. The speed premium. When BitMine began its Ethereum strategy on July 8th, it held only $4 of Ethereum per share. On July 27th, it held $23 of Ethereum per share, a $19 increase in approximately 20 days. It's even higher today, which we haven't disclosed yet. BitMine is 12 times the size of MicroStrategy. So you have to give NAV growth a speed multiple. 2. The liquidity premium. MicroStrategy trades approximately $3 billion per day, and BitMine is the second most liquid crypto treasury company, trading $1.6 billion per day. This should also deserve 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 liquidity come from? How can we get more liquidity?
Tom Lee: It might be the synergy of the team.
First, I'm the Chairman of BitMine. BitMine's primary investors are private equity firms, led by MOZAYYX, a renowned and highly regarded macro hedge fund. We were able to attract investors like the founders of Founders Fund, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Bill Miller. The biggest blue-chip names in traditional markets and the venture capital world are backing BitMine.
Second, I've been a long-time supporter of cryptocurrencies. I strongly advocated for Wall Street to care about Bitcoin as early as 2017. Ethereum is now having its 2017 moment. I think this is logical for people who understand us.
I'm a huge supporter 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 toward 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 is it similar to Ethereum today?
Tom Lee: I'd love to give you a little background on Fundstrat in 2017. Fundstrat is a macro and thematic firm. We write about big story arcs, also known as narrative arcs, which led us to focus on Bitcoin, and we did two different studies.
One was the Millennials. In 2017, the oldest Millennials were in their twenties. We realized they would be a huge driver of the US economy. Our work with Millennials was so compelling that we ended up collaborating with Snapchat on several white papers discussing Millennials as a demographic you needed to monetize. Snapchat was trying to convince advertisers to target Gen Z and Millennials specifically.
Second, we noticed Bitcoin. When I was at JPMorgan, it was priced at $100, and then suddenly in early 2017, it was $1,000. So Fundstrat spent months trying to understand Bitcoin. We discovered that 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 that Wall Street needed to understand Bitcoin because it was digital gold. We were the first Wall Street firm to introduce it to institutions. In 2017, 0% of institutions owned Bitcoin. For the past eight years, the biggest narrative around Bitcoin has been that it's 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 in the same way that baby boomers owned gold. This is a generational story, but also a wealth replacement story.
That's the backstory. I did a lot of webinars. But Fundstrat actually lost institutional clients. Fundstrat's number of paying clients actually declined because they thought we were completely crazy. They said, "How can you recommend something that only drug dealers and Dark Web people use? And you say it's a legitimate asset class?" So Fundstrat's reputation actually suffered.
Bitcoin is now $120,000, a 120-fold increase. For those clients who followed our advice and allocated 1% to 2% of their portfolio to BTC, their BTC assets now account for almost 100% of their portfolio value.
This is also happening with Ethereum today, as Ethereum was once a somewhat dormant chain. People wanted a faster network or newer ways to do validation, but Ethereum hadn't been down for a decade. This is 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 movement going on? Is this the reason why ETH treasury companies have such incredible tailwinds? Or is this just a fabricated narrative?
Tom Lee: Wall Street doesn't understand until it starts making money. Nvidia is a great example. It's an exponential growth stock. But you know, there are times when Nvidia doesn't move at all for a year and is literally dead money, or Palantir is 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 this, but we have to reprice it."
This is what's happening on Ethereum right now, as on-chain activity has surged to all-time highs. The Ethereum community has been revitalized, and the price has certainly rebounded, with more people using Ethereum. While the benefits of the Genius Act for smart contract blockchains are clear, it's also good for Bitcoin, which won't support stablecoins.
Is it a bad thing that Ethereum didn't hit $15,000 today? I've seen that happen. We recommend Tesla and Nvidia, and they've been surefire winners in Fundstrat Capital ETFs since 2019, and they've been in the research portfolio for a long time. They don't track income; they move in steps. I think the same is true for Ethereum. I hope Ethereum stays at its current price for five years because that means we can buy it at a more attractive price.
If ETH is $17,000, it would be much more expensive for Ethereum Treasury companies to buy ETH. Of course, their stock prices would benefit. But to me, it's actually a good thing that it's at this price.
ETH Price Prediction: 100x Potential
Bankless: So, just like Wall Street didn't understand Bitcoin in 2017, it still won't understand Ethereum in 2025. Perhaps 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 are astonishing, at least in traditional finance. Do you think ETH can do something similar to Bitcoin? What are your price predictions for Ethereum?
Tom Lee: I actually think Ethereum has more upside potential because there was more skepticism at the beginning. Bitcoin wasn't necessarily something people short. 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 to go up 100x.
Ethereum is like Bitcoin in 2017. Wall Street isn't professionally convinced that Ethereum is even a viable chain, given some fair criticisms. For example, 1. Ethereum has migrated to proof-of-stake; 2. There was a period of time when too much ETH was released, but this is being addressed; 3. There's still debate about whether Wall Street will build on Ethereum, stake ETH, or even use it; and 4. Ethereum is considered a Layer 2 story, and Layer 2 offers no benefits to 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, then Ethereum can also go up 100x. Luben has this upside in mind, too. 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 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, it's also a focal point in the US debate over AI dominance. Ethereum plays a strategic role here.
If MicroStrategy has three times the upside of Bitcoin, then theoretically, Ethereum treasury companies could have three times the upside of Ethereum itself. So, you wouldn't say Ethereum treasury companies 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 may surprise people, even within the cryptocurrency community. You've predicted a 100-fold increase in Ethereum's value to around $40 trillion, and you've even suggested it could surpass Bitcoin. This isn't a mainstream view among the cryptocurrency community, even though many ETH supporters have long held this view. Where do you think Ethereum's price 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 story for Ethereum is better than it was in December 2024, and that was $4,000. We should at least get back to the $4,000 level.
The Ethereum story is even better today than it was a year ago, when the ETH/BTC ratio was 0.05. At 0.05, ETH should be at $6,000. A lot can happen between now and the end of the year, including other Ethereum treasury companies starting to buy ETH and Bitcoin rising. So, I do n't think it's unreasonable to see ETH reaching $7,000, or even $12,000 or $15,000, by the end of 2025.
The Fed starts to turn dovish in 2026, so central bank liquidity is rising and ETH should continue to build at these price levels by the end of 2025.
I don't know if there are crypto cycles, but there should be. That's in our favor because I personally think an Ethereum treasury company would want the price of ETH to remain flat for the next five years and then surge higher. But that probably won't happen. It'll probably be a step function.
How to value ETH
Bankless: Tom, how do you analyze ETH 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 internet 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 E. People spend too much time on E. But it's always about PE. The price of ETH isn't based on current trading volume recorded any given week. It's actually based on a perception of what it will be in five years.
Bankless: So how do you estimate the size of this market? Do you refer to Ethereum as digital oil, and is that a way of talking about its ceiling?
Tom Lee: The report "ETH is Digital Oil" is very well done. I know the Mosaics team also helped build two models for Ethereum, one is basically a banking system agent model, and the other is a payment agent model.
But 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 against trying to build a framework. But to me, ETH at $3,600 is kind of ridiculously undervalued.
Crypto Treasury Companies Are Far From a Bubble
Bankless: Tom, do you think at some point these crypto treasury companies get a little overheated? Could they potentially enter bubble territory? Could they become overinflated, with premiums becoming reflexive, and then suddenly take a tumble like an elevator ride, with more systemic consequences for crypto and the broader economy? Is that something you're worried about?
Tom Lee: A bubble only truly forms when everyone is optimistic.
The only way a crypto treasury company can get into trouble is if they use leverage. Anyone who structures debt with exotic instruments, unless they're scarce, can do a lot because they changed the world. Same with MetaPlanet. Those that aren't scarce are the ones that get into trouble. But most crypto treasury companies are pretty ordinary. So what happens? Their price just goes down. But I don't think it's going to cause a stock market crash. Stock market crashes are usually caused by 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.
