Tom Lee의 신념 강화: 암호화폐 봄이 도래했다, ETH는 25만 달러까지 오를 것이다
- 핵심 의견: Tom Lee는 암호화폐 시장이 이미 '암호화폐 봄'에 접어들었다고 보고, 약세 심리가 바닥을 의미한다고 주장한다. 그는 ETH가 궁극적으로 25만 달러에 도달할 수 있으며, 그 핵심 동력은 인공지능(특히 에이전트 AI)과 토큰화된 금융 인프라의 변화에서 비롯된다고 예측한다.
- 핵심 요소:
- 5가지 거시적 촉매제: 이란 전쟁 종식으로 인한 유가 하락, 미국 《Clarity Act》 법안 통과, 백호의 암호화폐 지지, 친(親)암호화폐 성향의 신임 연준 의장, 증시 장기 강세 전망.
- AI와 블록체인의 융합: 에이전트 AI와 로봇 기술이 인터넷 트래픽을 주도할 것이며, 블록체인은 신원 인증 및 결제에서 기존 시스템보다 우수하다. 소프트웨어 주식의 상승세는 ETH 가격으로 전이될 것이다.
- 토큰화 시장 규모 전망: 토큰화된 증권 시장은 300조 달러에 달할 수 있으며, 대규모 운영이 가능한 블록체인은 극소수에 불과하다. 주요 스마트 계약 플랫폼인 ETH가 수혜를 입을 것이다.
- 이더리움 재무부(財庫, Treasury)의 부상: 이더리움 재단 보유량은 0.1%로 감소한 반면, Bitmine과 같은 기업 재무부는 총 공급량의 7%를 보유하며 네트워크의 핵심 관리자로 부상하고 생태계에 자금을 지원하고 있다.
- Bitmine 사업 진전: ETH 최대 재무부(공급량의 4.47% 보유)이자 최대 스테이킹 운영자로서 러셀 1000 지수에 상장되었으며, 6월 26일 기관 자산 배분이 촉발될 것으로 예상된다.
Tom Lee, the new-generation diehard ETH bull, is here to restore faith once again.
On June 2, Beijing time, Tom Lee, Chairman of the Board of BitMine (NYSE: BMNR), the publicly traded company with the largest Ethereum treasury, attended the "Proof of Talk 2026" conference at the Louvre in Paris and delivered a speech titled "Crypto Spring: ETH is the Future of Money."
In his speech, Lee argued that the current bearish sentiment marks the market bottom for both Bitcoin and Ethereum. He stated that as AI and tokenization drive major transformations in financial infrastructure, ETH could eventually reach $250,000. (Odaily Note: On the day of Tom Lee's speech, BTC fell below $66,000, and ETH dropped to a low of $1,820. BitMine's current ETH holdings are facing a loss of approximately $8.86 billion.)
Furthermore, he mentioned that BitMine recently purchased 111,942 ETH, increasing its holdings to nearly 5.4 million ETH, roughly 4.47% of the circulating supply. In contrast, the Ethereum Foundation has been selling off for years and now holds only 100,000 ETH, a negligible 0.1% of the total supply. He believes corporate validators will replace the shrinking Ethereum Foundation as the network's key stewards.
Below is the full text of Tom Lee's speech (edited and abridged), compiled by Odaily Planet Daily. Enjoy~
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Good afternoon, everyone. I have prepared a 30-minute speech. There's a lot to cover, as there are many topics worth discussing.
I believe we have entered a crypto spring. Many of you might have lost faith in crypto because prices haven't gone up. Your friends might be exiting, and there's anger in the crypto space. Many think AI will be the main protagonist going forward. I believe these are all typical signs of a market cycle bottom. In fact, I have a few slides to explain why Agentic AI is a key pillar of the crypto narrative, a trend that will unfold this year.
So, I'll divide this sharing into three parts:
- Part one is a macro explanation: five reasons why I firmly believe the crypto spring has arrived. Even if you don't believe in many of the products being built in the blockchain and crypto space, five major tailwinds will play out this year;
- Part two is to explain to you why Ethereum is highly likely the best example of the future of money. I'll talk about the Foundation and the role it should play in this new system;
- Part three is that if you want exposure, instead of buying the underlying tokens, you should buy crypto treasury stocks (primarily BitMine).
1. Has the Crypto Spring Arrived?
Why do I think the crypto spring has arrived?
Take a look at this price chart for Ethereum below. You can see it has been consolidating for nearly five years, stuck in this range, waiting for a decisive breakout. If you are bearish, you might think it will break downwards. I will explain why I believe it is poised for a bullish breakout.
(Odaily: This chart is outdated; ETH has fallen to the $1800-$1900 range now.)
The first catalyst: The Iran War is approaching its end.
I know many think crypto prices have nothing to do with the Iran War. But the Iran War has already caused problems for oil prices and supply.
Oil is a fundamental driver of inflation. If oil triggers inflation issues, it means global central banks must tighten policy: oil prices rise, supply of oil products is severely impacted, forcing policymakers to raise interest rates. So once the war ends, the fear premium on oil disappears. Oil prices could drop to $40 per barrel.
Ethereum currently shows a high negative correlation with oil prices. In fact, this is the highest negative correlation in Ethereum's history. So, it's clear that rising oil prices are bearish for ETH prices. We can see this from the statistics.
If you don't believe my claim about inflation and oil prices, take a look at this chart. It starts from 1985. The top line shows oil price changes, the bottom line shows Core CPI. As we can see, every time oil prices surge persistently, Core CPI accelerates higher.
Therefore, if this is a protracted conflict, inflation will arrive. In fact, last month the FOMC said the same thing in its minutes: if inflation persists and stays above 2%, then appropriate tightening is suitable. Central banks don't want inflation above 2%. If oil prices stay high, they will maintain a hawkish stance.
Thus, our bet is that the war is about to end.
The second positive macro catalyst is the Clarity Act, which provides a legal framework for crypto adoption in the US and institutional participation.
Unfortunately, the market only gives a 56% probability of the bill being signed this year. I've spoken with many people in Washington, including our own policy experts. The actual probability seems much higher. Prediction markets are trying to find an equilibrium, but I think the real probability is far above 56%.
Of course, I know big banks don't want this to happen. But remember, policy isn't made by big banks. Laws serve the people. Many voters want to see the Clarity Act passed. If it passes, it will be a huge catalyst.
The third positive catalyst is the government. Don't forget, the White House is pro-Bitcoin and crypto, which is also very favorable for dollar policy, especially regarding stablecoins.
Fourth, we have a new Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, who is pro-Bitcoin.
Finally, the stock market also faces huge tailwinds. I know many of you might be bearish on stocks because they've risen too much. But at Fundstrat (Odaily Note: The independent research firm founded by Tom Lee), we have been structurally bullish on stocks.
This following chart relates to the US population aged 30-50. Every time this number increases, the US economy grows faster than trend. Due to Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, we are witnessing this super-trend growth. As shown, if you superimpose stock returns with the 30-50 population count, stocks have always risen parabolically.
This tells us that the S&P 500 could reach 15,000 to 18,000 points by the end of this decade.
These are all favorable factors for crypto. Of course, you might still wonder why crypto is so weak. I think it's because people forget that crypto is the future of money.
2. The Future of Money
The first point I want to discuss: Agentic AI and Robotics.
Below is a list of all major milestones since the launch of ChatGPT in 2023, marking significant progress over the past three years.
The first milestone was the launch of ChatGPT; the second occurred in 2024 when agent systems began to have the ability to interact with and operate websites; the third major advancement is robotics – Optimus Prime's progress in dexterous manipulation. And of course, Ukraine's manufacture of drones on an industrial scale.
Finally, we are witnessing the development of superhuman capabilities. OpenAI solved an 80-year-old puzzle. Figure AI introduced a robot capable of actual construction and large-scale operation in a warehouse. This implies that in the future, robots will dominate most traffic on the internet.
This is why people like Marc Andreessen call this trend "The Great Convergence." Because if you have robotic systems, you need to control them. Blockchain is far more effective than traditional systems at controlling robot behavior. For example, whether it's authentication, identity verification, or payment speed, all of these function better on a crypto system.
You might ask, why isn't this reflected in crypto prices yet? Because the impact is still gradually transmitting through the stock market.
The first group to truly benefit from the AI ecosystem were semiconductor companies, which are still going up. Then last year came memory stocks, which are undergoing revaluation. But as you can see, the market is now beginning to see AI's benefits for large-cap tech stocks and is transmitting towards the software sector. People thought software would be hurt by AI, but this small parabolic move indicates software companies are benefiting from AI as they develop infrastructure for the future AI ecosystem, which will be built on crypto.
So in my view, this is completely logical; we are just progressing step by step. I think this will only take a few months. If you think it's impossible, look at the relationship between Ethereum and software stocks; they have been moving in sync for a long time.
Now we see divergence. Software stocks have gone parabolic. I believe in a few weeks, ETH's price will reflect this.
The second key point is Tokenization. Wall Street wants tokenization today, and they also believe the future of money is computing power. In fact, many tech founders already see this. Partly because we have already seen the future.
Today, stablecoin transaction volumes have surpassed Visa. In the future, it is believed that tokenized securities markets could reach $300 trillion. This would include tokenization of real estate, fixed income, equities, derivatives, land, and gold.
You can see the tokenization market size is very small today. If the market reaches $300 trillion, how will it bring more value to or benefit crypto assets? Remember, crypto asset prices are highly correlated with the amount of tokenized assets. Therefore, if the market asset value reaches $300 trillion, the total value locked on the Ethereum network won't stop at $100 billion or $200 billion.
This is the reality: there are very few blockchains capable of operating at scale today. What does this mean? I believe that crypto technology, which offers immense efficiency, will replace many of today's most profitable banks.
Let me give you a couple of examples. JP Morgan is the most profitable bank in the world, with annual revenue of $60 billion. But there is a company called Jane Street, which essentially only does money transfer. They will earn $40 billion this year. That's almost as much as JP Morgan, but they only have 3,000 employees.
So, with a thousandth of the employees, they nearly match JP Morgan's profitability. This also shows that merely moving money is more valuable than safeguarding it.
Crypto excels at moving money. Take Tether. Tether might earn $15 billion this year. That's a crypto-native company with only 300 employees. Combined, it and Jane Street earn more than JP Morgan.
Investors always tend to back incumbents; they always overvalue incumbents. But as you can see, the new entrants are the ones who ultimately capture all the value. So, I believe that in the next 10 years, five of the top ten global financial institutions will be crypto-native companies.
This brings me to my third point: these smart contract platforms are very likely to become the unit of value for monetization. Because holding ETH for transactions is arguably easier than holding dollars.
Elon Musk said the future won't use the dollar as currency; it's just a measure of energy. Standard Chartered released a report on Ethereum this week. They compared Ethereum to Amazon, pointing out that many favorable factors are driving ETH accumulation, just like Amazon back then – Amazon's stock price was stuck at $6, and today it has increased over 1000 times.
So, one metric worth watching is the ETH/BTC exchange rate.
If our view is correct, as tokenization and AI develop, ETH will break out. And I think roughly a 50x increase represents substantial upside for Ethereum.
Finally, I want to talk about the Ethereum Foundation (EF). Because in this new world, the Foundation should no longer be the centralized node of the cryptocurrency. Vitalik wrote about this earlier this year. He said the EF will streamline its role; it won't be the sole centralized management body for everything Ethereum.
This makes sense because the EF's holdings have diminished. It once held 17% of the supply; by 2020, this dropped to 1%; last year, when BitMine started its treasury operations, this fell to 0.3%; today, the EF holds only 100,000 ETH, 0.1% of the supply.
If following the typical foundation model – a 5% return rate – they could only support about $10 million in grant programs. But this is where treasuries come into play. The Ethereum treasuries I refer to include BitMine, Sharplink, etc. – they now hold 7% of the ETH supply.
If you are an accountant, you know what treasury stock is. Treasury stock is essentially supply permanently withdrawn from the ecosystem. We also have yield now – about a 3% yield. So today these public treasuries generate $500 million in rewards annually. This is precisely the capital we can use to fund the crypto ecosystem. By the way, BitMine holds 4.5% of total ETH supply and accounts for 65% of all ETH treasury holdings.
In summary, before 2024, before we had a friendly White House, the Foundation played a crucial role: it funded public goods, provided much of the legal and operational infrastructure. Of course, it also coordinated the ecosystem, maintained neutrality, and tried to drive adoption. These were indeed very important functions. It made sense in the DeFi world.
But in 2026, in this new world, the Foundation's role has evolved.
Firstly, they still want to manage long-term research: topics like quantum resistance, privacy, how to keep this blockchain relevant. They want to coordinate private sector efforts. They want to set standards and best practices. I believe they will play a public role in representing the ecosystem.
But they want to enhance decentralization. Why is this absolutely necessary? An entity with a $240 billion network value, running for 11 years without a single day of downtime. It has 1,500 nodes spread across 89 different countries, and 15,000 developers.
I think this is too large to be coordinated by a single foundation. In fact, I've done a lot of research; here are three examples.
