He spent billions buying Ethereum, saying 4,000 is the bottom
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He spent billions buying Ethereum, saying 4,000 is the bottom
Tom Lee is definitely the king of narrative; he doesn't win by being right, but by being loud.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Lin Wanwan, BlockBeats
Editor's note: BitMine recently increased its Ethereum holdings to 1.5 million ETH, valued at approximately $6.6 billion, briefly surpassing SharpLink to become the world's largest corporate ETH treasury. However, as ETH prices declined, the company’s stock also came under pressure. Meanwhile, Tom Lee predicted that ETH prices may first drop to $4,075 before rebounding to $5,100. This raises a key question: Why has Ethereum's pricing power shifted into the hands of Wall Street capital? On August 12, BlockBeats offered a tentative answer.
No one expected the top spot in corporate Ethereum holdings would change hands within just 35 days.
BitMine, backed by Tom Lee, made it happen: a previously obscure Nasdaq-listed company leveraged a PIPE financing round and three structured accumulation phases to grow its ETH holdings from zero to 830,000, overtaking SharpLink and becoming the world’s largest ETH treasury.
This is not merely a numerical victory but a clash between two distinct capital lineages—the OG-style accumulation of SharpLink, patiently buying and holding, versus BitMine’s Wall Street–style strategy of driving price appreciation to realize gains. Low cost and high leverage, hodling mentality versus narrative-driven tactics—this is a direct confrontation of two worldviews.
Their difference isn’t just in how they buy crypto, but in who gets to answer a critical question: In the next phase of crypto finance, who holds the authority to define ETH’s “price”?
We attempt to understand this quiet yet profound industry shift from multiple angles.
Why Two Lineages of ETH?
If BitMine represents a structural, Wall Street–style raid, then SharpLink embodies the continuation of the “ETH native” logic.
The divergence between these two companies extends beyond holding pace, disclosure methods, and narrative strategies—it lies fundamentally in their contrasting origins and objectives.
SharpLink—OG-held coins, accumulated slowly over time. Examining SharpLink’s shareholder lineup reveals near-complete coverage of the Ethereum ecosystem’s capital chain.
The first group consists of native founders: Consensys (founded by ETH co-founder Joseph Lubin), which controls core infrastructure like MetaMask and Infura, with Lubin serving as SharpLink’s board chair. The second group comprises infrastructure players: Pantera, Arrington, Primitive, among others deeply involved in Layer2, DeFi protocols, and cross-chain infrastructure. The third group includes financialization specialists: Galaxy Digital, GSR, Ondo Finance, operating directly in institutionalization, derivatives, and custody services for ETH, transforming holdings into manageable, appreciating institutional assets.
This capital alignment not only amplifies SharpLink’s “ETH treasury” narrative but also provides resource leverage in buying, staking, and reducing positions, serving as a bridge for Wall Street to understand ETH.
Early ETH holding patterns reflected this “OG nature”: transfers originated from internal team wallets rather than public markets; purchases were small but spread over extremely long periods; emphasis was placed on security, liquidity management, and audit coordination.
According to financial reports and on-chain estimates, SharpLink’s average ETH acquisition cost ranges between $1,500 and $1,800, with some early holdings costing even below $1,000. As a result, the shareholder base is heavily composed of “hodlers,” making natural selling pressure unsurprising when prices return to around $4,000.
Additionally, on June 12, SharpLink filed an S-ASR document, whose core provision allows immediate share sales upon registration effectiveness.
This path isn’t flawed, but it naturally brings three issues: OG teams’ “hodling” mindset prioritizes cost-benefit ratios, making them prone to sell when prices surge; information flow within OG networks tends to be closed and cautious, discouraging proactive narrative building; prioritizing on-chain operations leads to lagging performance in financial reporting efficiency and capital market engagement.
This explains why, during Q3 2025, SharpLink appeared half a step behind BitMine’s rhythmic strategy of “disclosure → fundraising → accumulation → price increase.”
Vitalik Buterin image source: coingecko
In contrast, BitMine entered the ETH space with the full posture of a classic Wall Street player. Its PIPE financing structure itself reeks of financial engineering: using a combination of cash, warrants, and ETH for subscription; involving mainstream U.S. equity investors such as Galaxy Digital, ARK Invest, and Founders Fund; transparent token distribution with lock-up periods to stabilize valuation models.
The background of its board members further reveals the picture—many hail from investment banks, private equity, and hedge funds, well-versed in PIPE financing, regulatory arbitrage, and refinancing cycles. To them, ETH is not “digital currency” but a “priced, tradable, and monetizable” new financial asset.
The divide between OGs and Wall Street is not just about pace—it’s a conflict of motives.
This has forced SharpLink to reconsider: Is having only OG-backed ETH enough?
They seem to have answered that question—on August 7, they began introducing new Wall Street institutional investors into a $200 million registered private placement.
This marks a transfer of Ethereum’s narrative power—from OG hands to capital that can clearly explain financial statements, craft compelling stories, and execute structured strategies.
The future may not belong solely to BitMine, but it’s clear: the next phase of ETH price leadership will no longer be determined by crypto OGs, but by whoever controls the narrative structure and secures more Wall Street funding—whoever holds more “narrative chips.”
How to Seize the Top ETH Treasury Spot in 35 Days?
On July 1, 2025, BitMine held zero ETH; by August 5, its disclosed holdings reached 833,137 ETH. In just 35 days, this previously unknown company in the crypto space transformed into the “world’s largest corporate Ethereum treasury,” surpassing SharpLink.
What exactly did BitMine do?
BitMine’s execution was remarkably precise. During its 35-day surge, it issued a strategic announcement roughly every seven days, each advancing a carefully scripted narrative: Week One (July 1–7): Closed a $250 million PIPE financing, disclosing initial purchase of ~150,000 ETH; Week Two (July 8–14): Added 266,000 ETH, total holdings exceeding 560,000; Week Three (July 15–21): Purchased another 272,000 ETH, cumulative holdings surpassing 830,000;
These disclosures weren’t routine quarterly updates—they were inserted via media, official website, and investor letters to send a clear signal: “We are continuously buying large amounts of ETH, and we are leading institutional accumulation.”
This approach overturned the traditional treasury model of “waiting for financial reports” in favor of a narrative-driven, rhythmic offensive.
More importantly, its accumulation rhythm closely aligned with market movements. BitMine didn’t blindly accumulate; instead, it used market pullbacks to buy low. According to the PIPE filing, its average ETH purchase price was $3,491—avoiding short-term peaks while catching ETH at a sensitive point before entering a new uptrend.
This precision wasn’t accidental. It was enabled by a full toolchain provided by Galaxy Digital—OTC structuring, on-chain settlement, and custody—allowing efficient absorption of large ETH volumes without triggering sharp price volatility.
Meanwhile, BitMine’s stock price exploded in tandem with its disclosures, rising from $4 in early July to $41 in early August—a gain exceeding 900%. Its market cap surged from under $200 million to over $3 billion.
Notably, after each holding update, not only did BitMine’s stock rise, but ETH’s spot market also saw concurrent volume increases. The market began treating “BitMine buying → ETH price rise” as a logically connected event, further reinforcing the narrative loop.
This positive feedback cycle—market expectations → structured disclosure → asset purchase → price response—is viewed by Wall Street as a textbook case of market cap reengineering. But unlike typical cases, it didn’t just reshape company valuation—it used narrative to seize control of the ETH treasury narrative itself.
BitMine is no longer just a coin-holding firm; it’s becoming a central node in Ethereum’s institutionalization. Instead of waiting for market recognition, it actively manufactures it through timing, disclosure, messaging, structure, and pricing models.
In one sentence: This wasn’t a “wait-for-rise” accumulation, but a “force-the-rise” structure.
From nothing to something, from buying coins to inflating valuation, from disclosure to price dominance, BitMine delivered a blueprint for “structural appreciation” in 35 days.
And it may be the first financial prototype to emerge in the next Ethereum bull market narrative.
Tom Lee: The New Kingmaker
As co-founder and research head of Fundstrat Global Advisors, Tom Lee is one of the most influential bridges between traditional markets and crypto. He understands macro data, public sentiment, and, crucially, how to make “rising prices” sound both logical and appealing.
His fame doesn’t come from prediction accuracy, but from high frequency, strong narratives, and dominant positioning. The common saying goes: “Tom Lee may not be right, but he’s always early, loud, and memorable.”
His signature tool is the Bitcoin Misery Index (BMI)—a self-designed “market sentiment indicator” that quantifies market “pain” by combining trading volume, returns, and volatility.
The BMI’s real value isn’t predicting price moves, but providing “data-backed” justification for his bullish calls. For instance: when BMI is very low (<27), he declares “it’s time for long-term holders to buy”; when BMI is very high (>80), he claims “a structural bull market has arrived”; if prices fall, he says “sentiment hasn’t fully released”; if prices rise, he says “on-chain structure is healing.”
No matter the direction, he has a story; no matter the market, he stays bullish.
Tom Lee image source: coingape
Tom Lee’s “structured pumping” style has several distinctive features.
He always offers a new target price. In 2017, he predicted Bitcoin would “hit $250,000 by 2022,” then revised it to “$200,000 by 2024” in 2021; when markets underperform, he cites halving cycles, inflation adjustments, and Fed policies to delay expectations while upgrading the logic.
Platform synergy + frequent appearances. A regular on CNBC’s *Fast Money* and Bloomberg’s commentary roster, his Twitter (@fundstrat) posts nearly daily, with YouTube interviews and short video summaries spreading his views; he regularly publishes chart-rich data digests on Fundstrat’s site for secondary media use.
Moving retail with emotion, institutions with narrative. Retail investors hear him call bottoms; institutions listen to his structural analysis. Within one framework, he creates psychological expectations for different audiences, forming “nested narratives.” For example, during price crashes, he repeatedly emphasizes “institutional buying windows” while urging retail not to miss “pre-halving entry points.”
Shifting from forecaster to faith-builder. He doesn’t just say “it will rise”—he says “the rise is structurally justified,” “ETH will anchor tech stocks,” “BTC is the new digital gold.” He transforms outcome-driven bullishness into belief-driven asset revaluation.
During the 2024–2025 Ethereum narrative buildout, Tom Lee once again emerged as a key driver. He didn’t just say ETH would rise—he claimed “ETH will become part of corporate balance sheets,” directly providing narrative cover for BitMine-style operations.
Throughout BitMine’s rise, Tom Lee’s rhetorical playbook casts a deep shadow: using “structural metrics” like ETH-per-share to assess fundamentals; applying “cycle logic” to justify rapid price growth; using “institutional adoption” to mask aggressive, high-cost buying strategies.
Tom Lee is undoubtedly the king of narrative—not because he’s right, but because he’s loud.
Epilogue
In traditional finance, asset prices are determined by earnings and cash flows. But in today’s crypto world, price often precedes value, and narrative frequently drives valuation.
BitMine’s rise isn’t just about adding a line of ETH to a balance sheet—it’s a narrative reconstruction of how to make institutions “understand ETH.” SharpLink clings to old logic, slowly accumulating on-chain; BitMine dances to the rhythm of structure and sentiment, rapidly executing a “consensus handover.”
This isn’t about who’s more honest, but who can more quickly, clearly, and systematically frame “crypto assets” as “financial assets.”
Beyond this, a larger narrative race is quietly brewing: Who will become ETH’s long-term valuation anchor on Wall Street? Who will establish the next mainstream “ETH-per-share” model? Who can turn liquidity narratives into structural revenue? And ultimately, who will dominate institutional pricing power in the next cycle?
The market will decide. But one thing is certain: this battle for Ethereum treasuries is no longer just a relay of on-chain faith.
The ceiling for Ethereum’s valuation no longer belongs to the earliest OG bulls, but to the Wall Street capital that tells the best stories.
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