Token 2049 Interview: Shaping Finance’s Next Frontier with Tom Lee

On volatility, Lee said Bitmine’s debt-free balance sheet and growing Ethereum holdings per share help it stay resilient through market cycles. Wrapping up, he shared his timeless investing lessons: stay humble about what the market knows, follow the Fed, and remember that scarcity — in assets or in vision — is what drives real long-term value.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I'm Steve Zeng, Managing Director of Futu, the parent company of moomoo, servicing nearly 30 million investors globally. As you know, at Futu and moomoo, we have built a platform that lets investors trade the stocks, bonds, funds, and, of course, crypto. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Tom Lee. Tom is the co-founder of Fundstrat and also most recently appointed the chairman of Bitmine.

Hello moomoo users. I know there's a lot of you out there, so it's good to be talking to you.

It's good. So let's get started. Tom, I think let's talk a little bit about your career first. I think your career path, your career arc, actually looks very interesting and unique. So can you talk a little bit about how those have shaped your mind with regards to the markets and also your career?

I've got my start more than 30 years ago as a research analyst covering the wireless industry, which was a hyper-growth business, 34 million users in 1994, today more than 7 billion. That 17-year period that I covered the wireless names taught me a lot about how wireless companies, which grew exponentially, their stocks weren't connected to subscriber growth. It was always tied to sentiment, the availability of credit, and also like macro factors. So it served me well. And then I moved to JP Morgan and became the chief strategist there. But in 2014, reaching what you'd call a career midlife crisis, I decided to start my own research firm. Fundstrat celebrated its 11th year just last week. In 2017, we started to write about crypto. And the first report was about Bitcoin, we were recommending it when it was under $1,000, and we thought it could reach $25,000 within five years. And the idea was that Bitcoin was digital gold.

But looking back, as you know, Bitcoin is $100,000. That was really a narrative where we had to explain to investors why we wanted you to allocate 1% - 2%. And of course, it was a great return. We started to think about Ethereum in a very different way that we thought Ethereum was facing a really important structural moment, like where the time was right, and that Ethereum could make a move bigger than Bitcoin did in 2017.

And we also wanted to be part of the conversation in terms of helping guide the future Ethereum. So instead of just writing a research report, we decided to become involved by creating an Ethereum Treasury company called Bitmine. That closed on July 8th, when BitMine was $4.80. Today the stock is $52. And the intrinsic value of Ethereum held has gone from $4 to more than $40 today. But we are the second largest crypto treasurer in the world, the largest holder of Ethereum in the world. We have more than $12 billion, and we want to play a role in helping Ethereum properly shepherd its future because we're really constructive on Ethereum's future.

Thank you for sharing. Your career path is very interesting, from a strategy thinker to a practical doer in this industry. So you talked about Bitmine already. Can you talk a little about its difference between Bitcoin itself and MicroStrategy, and also Ethereum versus Bitmine Reserve?

I know Michael Saylor very well. I really reached out to him in 2020 when MicroStrategy pivoted from being a software security to owning Bitcoin. And so he made that move in August 2020. Fundstrat did a webinar for our clients and introduced him because of course, everybody wanted to understand a company making a bold bet or just making its pure treasury strategy. Bitcoin been very successful for him. He was successful partly because Bitcoin went up a lot. It was $10,000 when he started. It's USD 120,000 now. But his stock did even better. It went from $13 to $330 because his stock was almost more than 25 times. We studied that when we started Bitmine and he did 24 transactions that raised capital and for different reasons and at different times. And we decided that we could do some of the same structures but try to do it faster. And that's what BitMine has done because it has gone from holding millions of Ethereum to over $12 billion today. Bitcoin and Ethereum do not compete with each other. And Michael and I had many conversations because we are focused on very different parts of the financial ecosystem. Bitcoin is essentially inert because it's a store of value, and it's replacing gold.

And we believe Bitcoin will have the same what they call network value, the above ground value of gold, which would make Bitcoin worth somewhere between $1.5 million to $3.2 million.

So a lot of upside right? Ethereum is the base layer of the future financial system.

You have been very vocal about stablecoins because you think of stablecoins as the one of the most powerful use case for blockchain , especially Ethereum. Can you help us connect the dots between blockchain, Ethereum , stablecoin, gas fees, and how that contributes to or translates to Bitmine valuation?

Yeah, there's a couple of steps in between. So one, stablecoins are a real innovation in payment systems. The reason is that it's very fast. And there's what people call finality. When you make a payment with Tether or Circle, it happens almost instantaneously. So merchants really like it. And banks may not appreciate it as much because banks prefer to be their arbiter of finality. Banks want to be the finality gate and make money, whereas something like Tether does it on its own. Another advantage of stablecoins is that in dollar units, it goes out to 12 digits. So instead of normal US Dollar Currency of 1.00, Tether has 12 digits, so that allows you to do micropayments. And in the future, micropayments will be important as you think about an AI ecosystem and paying for agentic activities. So Tether is basically the money in the future. It's already proven to be a good business because last year, the company would rank as one of those profitable banks in the world. I think they're raising money at $500 million valuation, which makes them second only to JP Morgan in terms of total equity value. Now Tether can only work because there are actual dollars that back the Tether payment and it back 1 to 1. Now, Tether has other reserves, but it's primarily US Dollars via Treasury. They have to record that onto the blockchain and then that's the proof that this activity took place. They call that TVL, Total Value Locked. Tether has, in total, stable coins of about $300 billion of created dollars. Treasury Secretary Bessent thinks it's going to reach as much as 4 trillion or exponential growth over the next few years. For every dollar that's produced or created on the blockchain, about a third to a half of that is now secured value on the layer one like Ethereum.

So it's not as much about gas fees as it is about creating book value on the blockchain, it's locked value. So if we think that this is going to grow by 10 times and Ethereum is fairly priced today, then just the stablecoin future is worth 10 times Ethereum's price. So it should be worth $45,000. Now how does that benefit BitMine? BitMine owns Ethereum directly, and is growing its Ethereum holdings every day.

So if Ethereum price goes from $4000 to $40,000 let's say, then the share price of BitMine, which is $50, should go up more than 10 times. But I'm not saying that that's a forecast. I'm just saying that that's the mechanics. So of course, that would make BitMine, as what they call risk reward attractive, because the floor for BitMine is the value of Ethereum held, but the upside is how much Ethereum could move, and it would directly benefit the stock price. So if when one thinks about treasuries like MicroStrategy or BitMine, it's a direct bet on the price of the underlying token held in Treasury.

That actually reminds me of your seven principles of investing. Among the seven principles, can you explain a little bit one or two, which are more relevant now for moomoo investors?

What Steve's asking about is on the fundstrat website. It's what we call the seven principles of investing, and this is really our basic framework for all of our equity calls. So any decision and any forecast we make reflects some of this work. One of the first principles is that, "there is nothing new under the sun", meaning that you're very unlikely to know something that someone doesn't already know. And so we need to be humble about it and acknowledge that in this world of information, everything is known, but the future is what people don't understand. So there's a difference. That's what you have to make a judgement, thinking about where things can change. Another key principle we have is that equities are the junior pieces of the capital structure, and so taking the idea that all the information out there is known, it's already priced in everything. So in other words, if you have a good idea about buying a stock, and you say they make the greatest coffee in the world, I love it, and you want to buy the stock, it's already priced somewhere in that capital structure.

But if you say that this company can grow way faster than anyone expect, that's your opportunity. One of the third principles that I think is also important is this idea that "don't fight the Fed".That's the most important. I think we repeat it twice. Actually I think we say like, rule number seven - look at rule number three. And the reason is that when the Fed, which is the most powerful entity in the world is constricting monetary supply. The stock market cannot outperform that. So if the Fed is hawkish, you have to be super careful, and if the Fed is dovish, you have to be bullish. Many people seem to forget this right now, because the Fed cut interest rates in September of this year after being on hold for nine months. And I have many clients tell me, "who cares if the Fed cuts? It doesn't mean anything." I'm like, they've been constricting monetary supply, and they've been explicitly hawkish, and now they're cutting rates in September. That is bullish, and people are forgetting that it's bullish. So in 2025, we wrote about it to our clients today. That's a very bullish sign for October, November.

If you had to add an eighth one to your seventh principle of investing in an era of AI and digital assets, what would that be?

Okay. Tom, thank you very much for joining us today. It's a really real pleasure hearing your thoughts and the perspective on the markets and digital assets, the future of investing, and of course, seven principles of investing. I think at moomoo, our mission is actually to bridge the gap between the traditional investing and also digital assets. I think your thoughts actually add to that journey. Really appreciate that. Great to have you with us.

Thank you.