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Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder Tom Lee said in a Wealthion interview that crypto’s worst moment has passed and the next 12 months will be a ‘really bullish’ period. He pointed to the record $19 billion leverage liquidation last October and the four-year cycle bottom expected next month. Lee also highlighted tokenization as a potential $20 trillion opportunity, though on-chain assets currently total only about $60 billion. <a href="https://xpertsstudio.com/gareth-soloway-issues-bitcoin-warning-on-bond-yields/” title=”Gareth Soloway: Issues Bitcoin Warning on Bond Yields”>Bitcoin trades near $77,315, about 39% below its record. Lee chairs BitMine Immersion Technologies, which holds roughly 5.93 million ether and sits about $5 billion underwater on that position. He downplayed the CLARITY Act’s importance and said Fundstrat clients who followed its 2% crypto allocation advice now have crypto representing more than 85% of their portfolios.
Key Elements
Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, says the cryptocurrency market has already endured its worst moment and is poised for a sustained rally over the coming year.
In an interview with Wealthion published Friday, Lee argued that the next 12 months will be “a really bullish period for crypto,” citing the massive deleveraging that followed last October’s tariff shock and the early stages of a new four-year cycle. Bitcoin was trading near $77,315 at the time of the interview, roughly 39% below its record above $126,000 set days before the crash.
The strategist’s optimism rests on two pillars. The first is that the pain has already occurred. On October 10 last year, a threat to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese goods triggered the largest liquidation event in crypto history. More than $19 billion in leveraged positions vanished in a single day. Lee said the forced unwinding cleared out a substantial portion of borrowed capital, and using the four-year cycle that many traders rely on for market timing, next month could mark the bottom of this cycle.
“I think it’s going to be a really bullish period for crypto for the next 12 months,” he said.
Prices, however, have not yet recovered. Bitcoin remains well below its pre-crash high, while Ethereum has gained 3.2% over 24 hours to about $2,533. Lee also expressed a positive outlook for ether, pointing to several market and industry trends that could strengthen its position.
The second pillar of his thesis is tokenization, the process of moving stocks, bonds and funds onto blockchain rails instead of the slower back-office systems that dominate Wall Street today. Lee framed this as a structural shift that improves the efficiency of capital movement and ultimately benefits Bitcoin, Ethereum and other smart contract platforms.
He quantified the opportunity. If $100 trillion in assets migrated on chain and just 1% of that value were captured as revenue, the result would be $1.1 trillion in annual income. Valued like a conventional business, that translates to a roughly $20 trillion prize.
But that math depends on assets actually moving. BeInCrypto Research’s Tokenization 2026 report counted only about $60 billion in tokenized assets on chain as of May 31, a fraction of the figure Lee uses as his baseline. Moreover, 56% of that value saw no transfers during a given week. Some skeptics have gone further, with one chief investment officer dismissing the practice of wrapping an asset and parking it as “tokenization theater.”
Lee’s conviction is not entirely disinterested. As chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, he oversees a company that holds approximately 5.93 million ether as part of its treasury strategy, equivalent to roughly 4.9% of Ethereum’s supply. BeInCrypto reported this month that BitMine’s ether position is sitting on an unrealized loss of about $5 billion.
His bullishness also extends beyond tokenization. Lee has argued that economists are misreading the current inflation picture by focusing on two unusual price categories: portfolio management fees and flash memory. Together, he said, they account for about 60% of the gap between core CPI and core PCE. Advisory fees rise when markets rise because they are charged as a percentage of assets, and PCE captures that effect while CPI barely does. Flash memory prices have also spiked, showing up in PCE but not CPI.
“The average American doesn’t actually think there’s inflation just because the stock market went up and they have to pay their advisor more money,” Lee said. Strip out both categories, he argued, and core CPI is close enough to the Federal Reserve’s target that aggressive tightening is unnecessary.
On regulation, Lee downplayed the significance of the CLARITY Act, which Washington was scheduled to vote on Tuesday. The legislation would designate the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as the primary regulator for spot crypto markets, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the other involved agency. Lee said the CFTC already acts in that capacity, and he compared crypto’s position to prediction markets, “which boomed anyway” without specific legislation.
Fundstrat has recommended a 2% crypto allocation for more than a decade. In client accounts that followed the advice, Lee said, crypto now represents more than 85% of the portfolio. He attributed the increase entirely to price appreciation rather than additional purchases.
“Our original recommendation for a 2% position, for the average account for Fundstrat that actually took our advice, is now over 85% of their portfolio,” he said. Clients held their 2% allocation, and Bitcoin’s price appreciation did the rest.
Lee noted that roughly 80% to 90% of retail investors still have no crypto exposure, with many holding gold instead. The choice before them, he said, is straightforward: “Do they want to be right or do they want to make money?”
He has made similar calls before. In August, Lee said market fear could push Bitcoin toward $150,000. The current rally has lasted about six weeks, which he interprets as evidence that the bottom has already been reached. Early signs of Korean investors borrowing to buy crypto again also support his view that leverage is returning to the market.
The broader context is one of recovery from a historic shock. The October liquidation event erased more leveraged positions in a single day than any previous episode in crypto’s history. Since then, the market has stabilized but not reclaimed its highs. Lee’s framing is that the worst is over, and that the combination of deleveraging, the four-year cycle and the tokenization narrative creates a favorable setup for the next 12 months.
For investors, the implications are significant. If Lee is correct, the current period represents an accumulation phase ahead of a broader rally. His tokenization math, however, depends on assumptions that have yet to materialize at scale. The gap between the $20 trillion opportunity he describes and the $60 billion currently on chain underscores the uncertainty.
Lee’s dual roles at Fundstrat and BitMine also mean his views carry weight in both the research and corporate treasury communities. His firm’s long-standing 2% allocation recommendation has produced outsized results for clients who followed it, even as the broader retail market remains largely unexposed to digital assets.
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Source: finance.biggo.com