Ethereum should be worth more than $5,000 in the next crypto bull cycle, according to Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies and co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors. In a Bankless podcast released on Aug. 24, 2026, Lee said ETH could "easily" clear $10,000 within one to two years if Wall Street tokenization and AI-driven demand are added on top of that cycle view.
The episode was hosted by David Hoffman and carried the title BitMine Is About to Own 5% of ETH | Tom Lee.
The input also included a detailed conflict-of-interest disclosure. BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), where Lee serves as chairman, was described as the world’s largest institutional holder of Ethereum, with about 5.8476 million ETH as of Aug. 23, equal to about 4.8% of total supply. Lee is also a personal investor in BitMine. Fundstrat Capital, which he manages, runs the GRNY ETF, while Fundstrat’s core business is paid research subscriptions. That means Lee’s personal financial interests are closely tied to the price of ETH, BMNR shares, and GRNY performance.
BitMine went from zero to nearly 5% of ETH supply in 14 months
Lee said BitMine announced its shift to an Ethereum treasury model on June 30, 2025, with a goal of acquiring 5% of ETH supply. At the time, the two Bankless hosts privately thought that target was unrealistic. Fourteen months later, BitMine’s holdings had reached about 5.82 million ETH, close to 4.9% of supply based on a 120.7 million ETH total.
Hoffman said at the start of the show that BitMine was one of the few examples in the digital asset treasury, or DAT, space that had not only survived but beaten expectations.
Lee attributed that result to three factors. The first was a simple and consistent message to investors: keep the capital structure clean by using equity financing only, with no debt and no convertible notes. The second was framing ETH purchases as support for the Ethereum ecosystem, with a 5% target large enough to matter but not large enough to become an overly concentrated force. The third was asking investors to judge the strategy over years rather than week to week. Lee cited Michael Saylor’s view that these companies should be assessed on a four-year horizon, not by short-term price moves.
He also said BitMine was able to raise capital above net asset value, or NAV, in nearly every financing round. ETH exposure per share rose more than 10x from the roughly $450 level tied to the stock’s early trading period. In Lee’s telling, that amplified the ETH exposure attached to each early share and helped explain why the stock was able to stay above $450.
More than 60 straight weeks of ETH buying
Lee said BitMine has bought ETH every week since the treasury shift, pushing the streak past 60 weeks. Over the same period, Strategy (MSTR) paused bitcoin purchases several times and at one point sold bitcoin. Lee said BitMine’s discipline came down to doing only the highest-return-on-capital action each week.
Over the last five weeks, that has meant a combined approach of buying ETH and repurchasing stock. Lee said that if the company believes ETH could see a major move before year-end, it becomes more tactical: continue accumulating ETH while also buying back shares, because buybacks concentrate ETH exposure on a per-share basis.
How BitMine funded the buying
Lee outlined three main funding sources.
- Issuing common stock above NAV, which he described as the main source of cash, though used with restraint.
- Buying ETH at a discount. Lee said most of the ETH acquired over the past 14 months was not bought at spot prices, but through structured arrangements that provided discounts and added value for shareholders.
- Issuing BMNP, a perpetual preferred stock with a 9.5% dividend. It was launched in June, was oversubscribed by more than five times, priced at $80, and was trading at about $91 when the episode aired.
Lee compared BMNP to a three-year at-the-money ETH call option. In his framing, the company pays a 9.5% annual dividend in exchange for the right to lock in more ETH at current prices. He said a similar option bought in the market could cost close to 100% in premium.
Staking rewards and dividend coverage
BitMine has staked more than 5 million ETH through its in-house Maven staking platform and partners, Lee said. At an annualized staking yield of roughly 2.6% to 2.7%, that would add about 120,000 ETH per year.
Lee then ran a simple gap analysis. BitMine was still short by about 200,000 ETH from its 5% target, but staking could "automatically produce" around 120,000 ETH a year. That left only about 80,000 ETH to be purchased outright.
He said BitMine has no reason to sell ETH because of financial pressure. Annualized staking income was put at about $300 million, while the annual dividend burden from the 9.5% preferred shares was about $30 million to $35 million. The input also said the company does not rely on selling ETH to cover expenses and does not convert those staking rewards into dollars or stablecoins.
What happens after 5%?
One of the main questions raised in the discussion was whether BitMine would stop buying once it reached 5% of ETH supply.
Lee laid out two paths. First, 5% may not be a hard ceiling. If institutions begin treating ETH as a long-term balance-sheet asset, he said it would be entirely reasonable for BitMine to keep buying above that level, though he added that the real point for reassessment is 2027. Second, even if holdings stop at 5%, staking rewards would keep growing the position naturally. At that stage, BitMine could decide to sell rewards to manage its overall share of supply, but not because it needs cash.
Rather than selling ETH, Lee said he would prefer to find ways to monetize the asset base, including deploying the roughly 800,000 ETH that is not currently staked into uses that help the ecosystem.
From treasury company to Ethereum ecosystem company
That led into what Lee described as BitMine’s second transition: moving from a company that simply buys ETH to one that operates as an Ethereum ecosystem company.
He said Maven, beyond handling BitMine’s own ETH, has already attracted more than $2 billion in external client assets. Lee called it a "real cash-flow business" incubated inside BitMine.
Backing Ethereum Foundation spinouts
The conversation also touched on changes around the Ethereum Foundation, or EF. Over the past year, EF has been narrowing its focus and spinning off parts of its work into three new entities: EthLabs, a nonprofit; EthSystems, a for-profit company; and EthInstitutional. BitMine was identified as the main seed-round backer for all three.
Lee said Ethereum has become too large for a single organization to handle every task, much like the semiconductor industry would not rely on a lone trade group. Because BitMine has permanent capital, no maturing debt, and no redemption pressure, he said it can provide a three-year or longer runway so those entities can focus on execution rather than monthly fundraising.
He described that support as both a public-goods contribution and a commercial bet, since BitMine wants Ethereum to capture as much of the future opportunity around tokenization and AI as possible.
Lee’s framework for ETH as an asset
Hoffman asked whether ETH should be viewed as a cash-flow asset or a store of value. Lee chose the second category, though he used a different frame to explain it.
He argued that it is wrong to treat the stock market as a pure cash-flow machine. Using the S&P 500 since 2009 as an example, Lee said total returns were up about 10x, while dividends accounted for only 30% of that gain. The remaining 9.7x came from capital appreciation. In his view, investors buy stocks because they believe companies can allocate capital better than they can themselves. Bonds, not stocks, are the pure cash-flow asset.
That is why he compared ETH to equities and land. Land can be rented out for income, but its core long-term property is appreciation across cycles.
Lee also responded to the argument that institutions may use Ethereum for tokenization without needing to hold large amounts of ETH. He said that kind of view tends to appear in bear markets and fades once ETH enters a new rally. He used the U.S. dollar as an analogy, saying the dollar cannot be redeemed for gold from the government either, yet still functions as the world’s trading unit. Trying to explain asset prices with one economic model, he said, often leads to absurd conclusions.
What Lee took from Saylor, and why BMNP matters
BitMine is often compared with Michael Saylor’s Strategy. Lee said Strategy had already been very successful as a common-stock story, but added that Saylor’s later approach became more complex, bringing in digital credit and volatility monetization structures. Lee said those innovations will need a longer window to judge and may not be clear until 2032.
BitMine, by contrast, chose a different capitalization path. It uses 9.5% perpetual preferred stock to lock in dollar costs while preserving upside for the common equity. Lee said that if ETH rises to $5,000 or $10,000, staking rewards would far exceed the preferred dividend burden, leaving common shareholders with substantial leverage to the upside.
He also suggested that BMNP would only need to be expanded if BitMine decides to buy well beyond 5% of ETH supply. Otherwise, he said, the current preferred issuance is enough.
Market bottom call, AI, and price targets
Lee said he believes the crypto market has already bottomed. He put the process at about 95% complete on a time basis and about 90% complete on a price basis. "Unless you’re a genius, buying here is probably cheaper than waiting for the bottom to be fully confirmed," he said.
He agreed with Hoffman’s observation that AI had been pulling capital away from crypto, but added a broader point: crypto is a downstream story from AI. As AI matures, Lee said, machine-to-machine transactions, on-chain settlement, and tokenized assets should all become more important, increasing the importance of crypto rather than reducing it. He said this year’s AI rally made it harder for other assets to attract attention, but that setup was starting to change.
Lee then gave direct price targets. ETH should trade above $5,000 simply because a new bull cycle is forming, he said. Add Wall Street tokenization and AI-driven demand, and ETH can "easily" move above $10,000 in one to two years. He also gave a rough shareholder-return scenario: if ETH flips bitcoin, that would imply an ETH price of about $15,000, and BitMine’s stock could rise 10x from current levels to around $180.
Conflict disclosure remained central to the discussion
The input made the conflict issue explicit from the start. BitMine holds close to 5% of ETH supply, Lee chairs the company, personally owns exposure to it, and also runs an ETF through Fundstrat Capital. That leaves his wealth deeply tied to ETH, BMNR, and GRNY.
Against that backdrop, the show’s main claims — that ETH is a store-of-value asset, that BitMine has no need to sell coins, and that ETH can break $10,000 in one to two years — all line up with Lee’s financial interests.
What the episode did lay out in detail was BitMine’s operating model: a debt-free push toward nearly 5% of ETH supply over 14 months, funded through equity, preferred stock, discounted acquisition structures, and staking income. Whether Lee’s price path is realized, as the input noted, still depends on the macro cycle, regulatory progress, and whether Ethereum can turn the tokenization and AI narratives into actual on-chain demand.