Tom Lee, chief investment officer at Fundstrat and chairman of Bitmine, said at the opening day of TOKEN2049 Singapore on Oct. 7 that the crypto bull market has already started, and that this cycle is being driven by forces different from those seen in earlier rallies.
Lee said he dates the start of the bull market to August. He pointed to Bitcoin moving above its 200-day moving average on Aug. 19 and to a four-year cycle bottom on Oct. 5. He also named four reasons behind his call: tokenization, wealth transfer, Digital Asset Treasuries, or DATs, and AI agent payments. In his view, the setup could produce the biggest crypto bull market on record.
Lee says the bull market began in August
「We are at the beginning of a crypto bull market.」 Lee said the market still feels fragile, but he sees that as a feature of an early-stage bull run. He added that major institutions including Franklin, Fidelity and BlackRock are now openly signaling that the bull market has begun, something he said did not happen during the previous three crypto winters.
On the technical side, Lee said Bitcoin moved above its 200-day moving average on Aug. 19, while Ethereum posted a golden cross on the same day. Based on his statistics, Bitcoin has gained an average of 200% over the six months following a move above the 200-day moving average since 2010. He also said that even with a hawkish Federal Reserve, a spike in oil prices and rising bond yields in the third quarter, crypto remained the best-performing macro asset class.
On timing, Lee said Bitmine market-timing adviser Tom DeMark believes Ethereum could break above $3,000 in the coming weeks. Lee also described the four-year cycle bottom as the final piece behind his bull-market call.
Tokenization and wealth transfer as capital drivers
Lee said earlier cycles were led by retail participation. In 2016 to 2017, the driver was ICOs. In 2019 to 2021, it was NFTs. This time, he said, the shift is toward institution-led tokenization. Citing Robinhood’s view, Lee said assets on traditional financial rails will be tokenized.
He also laid out the size of the potential capital pool. The crypto market is currently worth about $2 trillion, while off-exchange liquid assets total about $200 trillion. Using his estimated 1-to-37 ratio between inflows and market value, Lee said, 「$1 trillion into crypto would turn it into a $37 trillion market.」
Beyond tokenization, Lee said a $100 trillion wealth transfer is expected over the next 10 years. Citing U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, he said inherited wealth tied to the last bull market was about $400 billion, while the next cycle could see close to $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. As wealth moves from the baby boomer generation to millennials, he expects allocations to shift away from bonds and toward stocks and crypto.
DAT holdings and Bitmine’s Ethereum position
Lee said Ethereum DATs currently hold 7% of supply, while Hyperliquid’s DAT holds 14%. In his view, when supply is pulled out of the market and meets a bull market, price gains can become larger. He also said DATs would resume buying crypto once the bull market is underway.
Bitmine is one of them. Lee said the company now holds 6 million ETH and, at the request of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, will stop accumulating after buying roughly another 100,000 ETH and reaching 5% of supply. He added that investors do not need to worry about equity dilution.
AI agents will pay with crypto wallets, Lee says
Lee said the market often reduces AI to semiconductors and memory, but when those stocks correct, software and crypto tend to hold up better. He referenced Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, which sees agentic payments as the unifying point between AI and crypto. Lee summarized that view this way: 「AI agents are not going to carry a Visa card in their wallet. They are going to carry a crypto wallet.」
He said non-human actors are becoming a primary source of internet traffic, and that the biggest consumers of AI compute tokens are also other agents. With agents already able to bypass CAPTCHAs, he argued these systems need crypto to provide finality, smart contracts and execution.
From under $1,000 to $80,000 in 10 years
Lee also said he recently had dinner in Taiwan with venture capital friends he first met a decade ago. At the time, Bitcoin was below $1,000. It is now at $80,000. According to Lee, those investors said their returns were fine, but they wished they had simply bought Bitcoin directly.
From that, Lee said investors should raise their exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum as much as possible, while DATs offer a way to outperform Layer 1 assets. In his estimate, Ethereum rises at least 25x in this cycle. If ETH reaches $22,000, Bitmine shares could climb from $26 to between $300 and $500.
At the end of his talk, Lee quoted Charlie Munger: 「The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.」 He then told the audience they were 「not bullish enough.」