Tom Lee Says Ethereum Could Top $10,000 as Bitmine Nears 5% of All ETH

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Tom Lee, the former Wall Street strategist who now chairs Bitmine, is making one of the boldest calls in crypto: Ethereum will exceed $10,000 within one to two years, driven by a new bull cycle, Wall Street tokenization, and AI-driven demand for secure settlement rails. Speaking on the Bankless podcast, Lee argued that the current crypto winter is effectively over — 95% complete on time and 90% on price — and that Ethereum’s underperformance is a macro artifact, not a narrative failure.

The conversation centers on Bitmine’s imminent milestone: owning 5% of all Ether in circulation. The company has bought ETH every week for more than 60 consecutive weeks, accumulating 5.81 million tokens worth roughly $11 billion. Lee framed the position not as a cash-flow bet but as a store-of-value thesis built on an unusual analogy: a 345-year study of Amsterdam real estate showing that land, not buildings, drives long-term value. Ethereum’s settlement layer, he argues, is the land.

Lee also confirmed Bitmine’s role as lead investor in three entities spun out of the Ethereum Foundation, positioning the company as an ecosystem steward rather than a passive holder. He addressed the contentious staking issuance debate with deliberate silence, argued that AI strengthens rather than threatens crypto, and offered a nuanced assessment of Michael Saylor’s Strategy — concluding that its complex digital credit vision can only be judged by 2032.

Key Elements

The most important number in crypto right now is not a price. It is a percentage: 5%. That is the share of all Ether in existence that Bitmine, the treasury company chaired by former Wall Street strategist Tom Lee, has been methodically accumulating for more than 14 months. The company holds 5.81 million ETH — roughly 4.8% of circulating supply — and Lee says the final push to 5% could arrive by the end of 2026. Speaking on the Bankless podcast, Lee laid out the logic behind the accumulation, why he believes Ethereum’s value has nothing to do with cash flow, and how he gets to a price target that sounds absurd in a bear market: $10,000 per ETH within two years.

The 60-Week Buying Streak No One Expected to Last

When Bitmine announced its pivot to an Ethereum treasury strategy in mid-2025, the skepticism was loud. Fourteen months later, the company has bought ETH every single week — more than 60 consecutive weeks — a consistency Lee points out even Michael Saylor’s Strategy has not matched, since Strategy has had weeks with no Bitcoin purchases.

The execution depended on capital discipline. Bitmine sold common equity sparingly, only when shares traded above net asset value. It issued a perpetual preferred stock, BMNP, at a 20% discount to par with a 9.5% yield, which Lee frames as a cheap call option on ETH: a three-year call option would cost 60% to 100% premium, while BMNP costs 9.5% annually. The offering was oversubscribed more than five times.

But the real engine is staking. Bitmine has staked about 87% of its position — 5.07 million ETH — through its validator platform Maven. At current yields, Lee estimates annual staking rewards of roughly $250 million to $287 million, easily covering the preferred’s $30 million to $35 million annual dividend obligation. The company is buying ETH with income generated by the ETH it already owns.

Lee says the pace toward 5% has been deliberately throttled in consultation with the Ethereum Foundation, to avoid the perception that any single entity is centralizing the network. The remaining gap is about $350 million in ETH. Beyond 5%, the question gets revisited in 2027 — contingent on whether enterprises begin holding ETH as a strategic treasury asset.

Stocks, Land, and the Case Against Cash Flow

The most contentious part of the conversation came when host David pushed Lee on a foundational question: is ETH a cash-flow asset or a store of value? Lee rejected the dichotomy entirely.

His argument starts with the S&P 500 since 2009: roughly 1,000% price appreciation versus only about 30% in cumulative dividends. That means 97% of returns had nothing to do with cash flow.

“A bond is a cash flowing asset. A stock is actually a store of value because investors buy it on the belief the company is going to steward their capital properly.”

Then he deployed the episode’s most unusual piece of evidence: a 345-year study of Amsterdam real estate prices from 1628 to 1973, which disaggregated land value from structure value. Over that span, the structure’s value depreciated to zero at terminal value — a building is worthless after about 20 years — while the land appreciated. Land was the only store of value that survived.

“Over the long run, 0% of the store of value of real estate is attributable to the structure. Because it’s actually worthless at terminal value, whereas the land goes up. I don’t know. To me, doesn’t that sound a lot like Ethereum?”

In Lee’s framing, Ethereum’s “structure” — current dApps, layer-2 networks, use cases — will be rebuilt repeatedly. The settlement layer itself is the land. And he dismissed the “ETH has no value” argument as a bear-market artefact, comparing it to the old “we believe in blockchains but not crypto” position that crushed those who bet against Bitcoin. His pointed rebuttal: the U.S. dollar has no burn mechanism and no redemption value, yet functions as the global reserve currency. Economic models, he argued, do not explain asset prices.

Funding the Foundation’s Spinoffs

Bitmine’s strategy has evolved from accumulation to active ecosystem stewardship. Lee confirmed the company was the lead investor in each of the three entities spun out of the Ethereum Foundation: ETH Labs, ETH Systems, and ETH Institutional.

The rationale is that the Ethereum Foundation can no longer be the “omni effort for everything” — the ecosystem has grown too large and specialized. Bitmine provides permanent capital with a multi-year horizon, funded by common equity with no debt and no redemptions, allowing these entities to operate without constant fundraising pressure.

“Part of our work is public goods, obviously, because we want to keep Ethereum healthy. But we also want Ethereum to capture as much of the future opportunities possible.”

Lee was more measured on whether Bitmine wants to become a formal governance node in Ethereum’s stewardship network: “That’s a TBD.” The community, he acknowledged, is still assessing how permanent Bitmine’s capital really is. But he noted the company has proven longevity by surviving the crypto winter without forced sales.

The Staking Debate Bitmine Is Sitting Out

One of the most contentious proposals in Ethereum right now is an EIP that would reduce issuance for staking, potentially driving staking yields toward zero if staked supply exceeds 50%. Lee confirmed Bitmine has spoken with both proponents and opponents but has deliberately not taken a public position — several parties still want to meet with him.

He articulated both sides. On the pro side: the question of whether stakers are over-rewarded for security costs, and whether explicitly setting a staking target is “no different than a Federal Reserve establishing a short-term rate.” On the con side: unintended consequences, gaming incentives, and uncertainty on a chain that should be ossifying.

On the specific argument that reduced issuance increases the value of the principal — the “smaller coupon, higher bond price” logic — Lee was openly skeptical:

“I’m not trying to dismiss math… but if I had to live by the rules of those spreadsheets, I would have been a terrible equity analyst and I would have been a very unsuccessful stock investor.”

He pointed to the U.S. Fed funds rate being inexplicably high relative to other G7 nations despite similar inflation — evidence, in his view, that rates and yields do not always follow models. And for Bitmine specifically, even if staking yield went to zero, there are “plenty of ways to generate yield” from the asset, just as Bitcoin can be deployed to generate yield despite being theoretically yield-free.

Macro, AI, and the $10,000 Math

Lee’s framework is macro-first. He cited Stan Druckenmiller’s observation that 80% of a stock’s performance is attributable to macro and industry factors, then extended it to crypto: 90% of ETH’s return is macro-driven.

“When prices are down, everyone starts to point to individual actions of a specific company. But in a larger respect, 90% of what’s happened is really just macro.”

This means the current ETH underperformance is primarily a function of the crypto winter, not a narrative failure. And Lee believes the winter is effectively over: the market is 95% through the bottom on time and 90% on price. Bitcoin has likely already made its local low.

On AI — the force many investors assume is crowding out crypto — Lee argued the opposite:

“Crypto is a very important downstream story to AI. The stronger AI gets, it doesn’t make crypto less relevant — that’s the key. In fact, the more AI evolves, the more important crypto is.”

His logic: AI agents will need secure settlement rails for machine-to-machine transactions, micro-payments, and verifiable computation. The entities that captured massive value in the most recent cycle — Polymarket, Kalshi, Hyperliquid — did not exist in the prior one. The next cycle, he predicts, will create new entities valued between $1 billion and $20 billion, and Bitmine is actively sourcing them through its “moonshots” initiative.

Lee defended the validity of crypto cycles themselves, comparing them to technical analysis, which he says accurately calls market turning points:

“A real investor, even if they only care about fundamentals, should never ignore technicals because it’s really the technicians that get the top and the turning points correct.”

The price math follows from the cycle logic. A new bull cycle alone should push ETH above $5,000. Layer in Wall Street tokenization — which Lee calls “so much bigger than stablecoins” — plus AI-driven settlement demand, and the target expands.

“Just being in a new bull cycle means Ethereum should be above $5,000. But then what do we layer in on Wall Street tokenizing plus AI? I think Ethereum could easily be over $10,000 in that time frame.”

He also floated the possibility of ETH flipping Bitcoin, which at current ratios would imply roughly $15,000 ETH — a 10x for Bitmine shareholders from current levels.

The Saylor Comparison

Lee offered a nuanced take on Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury pioneer whose playbook Bitmine is now adapting for Ethereum. He called Strategy’s stock performance since Saylor’s pivot “a resounding success” as a common equity story. But he noted that Saylor’s approach has grown increasingly complex — new instruments, a “digital credit” vision attempting to monetize Bitcoin’s volatility as a yield component.

“We’ll only be able to judge the success of this until 2032.”

The lesson Lee draws is temporal. Saylor has earned enough credibility that investors should give him time, and the current criticism of Strategy’s leverage is largely a function of the crypto winter. The implied contrast with Bitmine: simpler capital structure, no debt, no convertibles, and an asset that generates yield natively.

The Bet Beneath the Bet

Strip away the numbers, and Lee is making a philosophical wager: that Ethereum becomes the settlement layer for a tokenized, AI-driven economy, and that owning 5% of that layer at the bottom of a cycle is the best expression of the thesis. The unresolved tensions are real. The staking issuance EIP could cut Bitmine’s primary yield’s own framework attributes 90% of returns to macro factors outside Ethereum’s control

But the test is approaching. Whether Bitmine reaches 5% by end of 2026, how the Clarity Act affects the purchase pace, whether the Ethereum Foundation spinoffs produce visible ecosystem wins — these are the checkpoints that will determine whether Lee’s stewardship thesis produces the legendary returns he is promising, or becomes another bear-market narrative that did not survive contact with the next cycle. For investors, the signal to watch is simpler: when tokenization starts moving on-chain at scale, the company that already owns one in every twenty ETH will not need to convince anyone of its position.

Full content available at:BitMine Is About to Own 5% of ETH | Tom Lee

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Source: finance.biggo.com