BitMine Chairman Tom Lee: Crypto Stocks Lead Bull Market
Tom Lee, Chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, stated that crypto concept stocks have led the market in Q3 2026, viewing this phenomenon as a signal for the start of a bull market. He differentiates this cycle from past ones driven by ICOs, NFTs, meme coins, and stablecoins, noting that new variables include tokenization, artificial intelligence, and more favorable regulations, which will broaden the funding landscape.
In a more detailed statement in the company's weekly buying announcement on September 21, he expressed that the bull market began in late June, driven by funds rotating from AI stocks back to crypto, strengthening fundamentals of tokenization and AI, and the end of a four-year cycle. So far in Q3, ETH has outperformed the S&P 500 by approximately 6519 basis points, which he sees as a prelude to stronger upward movement in Q4, expecting institutions that underweighted crypto due to AI stocks' dominance earlier in the year to replenish their positions in the last three months.
BitMine itself is demonstrating its strategy through its balance sheet. Since launching its Ethereum treasury strategy on June 30, 2025, it has been buying weekly, holding approximately 5,983,940 ETH as of around September 20, accounting for about 4.9% of the circulating supply, and is about 121,000 ETH short of its publicly stated "alchemy of 5%" target; valued at around $2,688, this ETH holding is approximately $16.1 billion, with about $13.6 billion staked, corresponding to about 5.07 million ETH. Additionally, it holds about 212 BTC, $714 million in cash and securities, and assets from so-called moonshot companies like Beast Industries and Eightco, totaling approximately $17.1 billion. In the past week, it bought another 27,562 ETH, worth about $74 to $75 million.
Lee, who is also a co-founder of Fundstrat, stated to Wealthion in mid-September that the next 12 months will be bullish, citing that Wall Street has only recently recognized blockchain as a tool for rebuilding tracks, with tokenized securities and stablecoins being utilized by financial institutions. He also mentioned that four of the 21 best-performing stocks in the Russell 1000 for the quarter were crypto-related, while BitMine's stock price rose approximately 99% for the quarter. Regarding ETH, he bets that Wall Street's tokenization will elevate demand for public chains and believes there is a chance to challenge previous highs this year; he also agreed during interactions that "a five-year consolidation is a prerequisite for a major rise."
Mechanically, the purchases are of listed crypto stocks and ETH spot: the treasury company uses equity financing to buy coins, and as the stock price rises, it can refinance to buy more. The selling is still based on viewing the four-year halving cycle as the only clock and treating AI stocks as the only growth container. The event-driven aspect is that the public company's holdings and statements are synchronized, rather than a single large whale transfer on-chain. Funds are shifting from AI-themed stocks and cash to high-elasticity crypto stocks like BMNR, and then into spot ETH and staking yields; benefiting are BitMine, which has hoarded nearly 5% of the supply and its staking cash flow, while traditional institutional portfolios that have not replenished in Q3 may chase higher prices in Q4. The realization of tokenization will increase demand for Ethereum block space, but does not automatically mean that previous price highs will be immediately breached.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Tom Lee gained fame as a macro strategist at Fundstrat, transforming BitMine from an immersion mining narrative into a publicly listed Ethereum treasury by mid-2025, with a target of controlling 5% of the supply. This is the ETH version of MicroStrategy's Bitcoin treasury model: public premium financing, weekly disclosures of purchases, and treating staking yields as recurring income. The company claims to be the world's largest ETH treasury, second only to Strategy in overall crypto treasury. Lee also invests in Dastan, the parent company of Decrypt, aligning his statements with his holdings. In the past, he has often provided optimistic timelines during halving cycles, ETF approvals, and Wall Street entries, this time pinning the starting point in late June 2026 and viewing the 6519 basis point outperformance of ETH against the S&P as a tracking error that institutions must explain.
The capital path is a closed loop of "stocks - cash - ETH - staking." The rise of BMNR expands the space for issuing stocks, cash purchases push up the implied ETH per share, and staking approximately 85% of the position yields annual rewards in the hundreds of millions. The buying will not stop because the target is still 121,000 ETH short, and stopping purchases would be interpreted by the market as a withdrawal of cycle judgment. For Wall Street tokenization, Lee aims for settlement and issuance to occur on Ethereum, thus writing the block demand of products like BlackRock, ARK, and Securitize into ETH fundamentals, rather than reiterating the DeFi summer narrative. He uses the term "more favorable" regulations as a premise for expanding the funding landscape, which does not align with New York State's concurrent classification of prediction markets as gambling.
Drawing parallels to the listing of mining companies in 2013, MicroStrategy's pivot to Bitcoin in 2020, and the opening of spot ETFs in 2024: each round involves putting on-chain assets into traditional accounts, allowing pensions and mutual funds to comply with exposure through stocks or ETFs. The difference this time is that the buyer is a single listed company attempting to approach 5% supply, with a higher concentration than ETF diversified holdings. The industry phase has shifted from retail-driven ICO/NFT/meme to listed company treasuries and tokenization pipelines. For the upward movement to exceed the old cycle, the premise is that institutions' underweighting must be forcibly corrected, rather than another round of meme diffusion without fundamentals.
The structural judgment belongs to capital concentration. Pricing power has shifted from retail thematic rotations to a few listed treasuries that can continuously buy spot and issuers that can register securities on-chain. The mechanism is: once the supply is locked and staked by the treasury, circulation becomes thinner; stock premiums provide leverage, and institutional tracking errors provide buying pressure. Declaring the end of the four-year cycle effectively changes the clock from halving to "whether Wall Street builds its track on Ethereum." Whoever hoards enough supply first will be the one to be repriced in the next round of allocation correction.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Crypto stocks often rise first, reflecting the listed shadow of a spot bull market.
The treasury company is not buying coins, but collateral for its own stock.
Declarations of cycle endings usually come from those who have already accumulated enough.