Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee: Optimistic About ETH/BTC Rising
According to PRNewswire, Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine, stated that historically, during cryptocurrency bull market cycles, the ETH/BTC ratio tends to rise as Ethereum's usage relative to Bitcoin increases.
Tom Lee cited historical cases to illustrate this pattern, including the NFT boom of 2020-2021 and the explosive growth of stablecoins in 2025, both of which were significant catalysts for increasing demand for Ethereum network applications, thereby raising the ETH/BTC ratio.
Looking ahead to the next cycle, Tom Lee believes that Wall Street institutions tokenizing assets and deploying them on blockchain networks, along with the demand for Agentic AI's use of blockchain infrastructure, could become new driving forces pushing the ETH/BTC ratio higher.
In terms of data, Tom Lee pointed out that since the third quarter of 2026, ETH has been one of the best-performing macro assets, outperforming the S&P 500 by 5430 basis points as of last Friday; since June 30, the top three performing assets have been ETH, BTC, and SOL, with significant outperformance of crypto assets compared to other mainstream macro assets likely to attract more institutional funds to increase their allocation to crypto assets.
Tom Lee added that as we enter the last few months of 2026, the crypto market faces several positive catalysts, including the anticipated vote on the CLARITY Act in mid-September, Korean investors re-entering the crypto market from AI concept stocks, and what he believes will be the bottoming of the so-called "four-year cycle" in the coming weeks.
From a funding perspective, Tom Lee described a positive feedback loop of "expanding application scenarios - rising network usage demand - ETH appreciating relative to Bitcoin - attracting more institutional allocation"; where Korean investors shifting from AI stocks to crypto assets reflects a cross-asset class capital rotation, and regulatory developments like the CLARITY Act vote are seen as key prerequisites for whether institutional funds can flow into the crypto market on a large scale and in compliance. Once these catalysts gradually materialize, short-term capital flows may shift from traditional macro assets and AI stocks further into crypto assets, especially tokenization and agent applications related to Ethereum.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Tom Lee is known for his bullish stance on crypto assets. Previously, as co-founder of Fundstrat, he publicly set long-term price targets for Bitcoin and Ethereum multiple times. After becoming Chairman of Bitmine, he continues to advocate for the inclusion of Ethereum in corporate balance sheets, becoming one of the representative promoters of the "Ethereum corporate holding" path following the Strategy Bitcoin hoarding model.
The capital pathway logic analyzed by Tom Lee is that institutional funds, through asset tokenization projects (such as Wall Street putting traditional financial assets like stocks and bonds on-chain) and the demand for Agentic AI applications for blockchain settlement and identity verification, directly increase the actual usage of the Ethereum network. This, in turn, transmits through mechanisms like gas fee consumption and staking demand to the scarcity and valuation expectations of ETH tokens. This aligns with his previously emphasized narrative that "ETH is the preferred infrastructure for Wall Street asset tokenization."
This logic is similar to the historical phase during the DeFi and NFT boom of 2020-2021, when Ethereum's network usage surged and the ETH/BTC ratio significantly increased. At that time, Ethereum leveraged its first-mover advantage in the smart contract ecosystem to capture most on-chain innovation activities. Currently, the Ethereum industry is transitioning from a narrative driven by "NFT and DeFi applications" to one driven by "institutional asset tokenization and AI agent applications."
Essentially, this is a reallocation of funds under the logic of technological substitution—when traditional financial asset tokenization and AI agent economic activities begin to rely on blockchain networks for settlement and identity verification, public chain networks (like Ethereum) that can support these new application scenarios will structurally increase their network usage. The core mechanism is that the token value of a blockchain network ultimately depends on the scale of its actual usage scenarios. Once Wall Street and AI both introduce new scenarios to the Ethereum network, its relative value capture ability compared to Bitcoin is expected to continue to strengthen.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- Every bull market has a new "story of Ethereum being used."
- Funds always flow to networks that are actually used, not just talked about.
- The day AI and Wall Street both go on-chain is the day the narrative truly lands.