Tom Lee's speech in Dubai: Many people are ready to give up, why do I still persist?

Author | Tom Lee

Compiled by | Wu Says Blockchain

At the Binance Blockchain Week 2025 held in Dubai on December 3-4, Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat and chairman of BitMine, delivered a speech titled "The Crypto Supercycle Remains Strong," systematically outlining his long-term bullish view on the crypto market. The core points include: why the main theme of 2025 is "tokenization," why he believes that Bitcoin and Ethereum prices have bottomed out, how the traditional four-year cycle is being broken, the role of Ethereum as an infrastructure in the global financial system, and how Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies will play a key role in the next round of crypto financialization. He also explained BitMine's strategy, the business logic of the Ethereum treasury model, and the next phase of financial innovation brought about by the combination of market predictions and tokenization.

The content reflects the personal views of the guest and does not represent Wu Says' views. The audio transcription was completed by GPT and may contain errors. Please listen to the full podcast on platforms like Xiaoyuzhou and YouTube.

Xiaoyuzhou: https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episodes/694141db4c65abaff34a5756

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Here is the content of Tom Lee's speech:

Opening of the Speech

Tom Lee: Hello everyone. I’m glad to communicate with you at this moment. As you know, since October, the crypto market has gone through a tough period, with rising pessimism. I know many people are ready to give up. Therefore, I believe now is a very appropriate time to discuss the crypto market and why I am so bullish on Ethereum.

So, the title of today’s speech is "The Crypto Supercycle Remains Strong." Let me briefly introduce my background. I currently hold three positions: First, I am the head of research at Fundstrat Global, which focuses on macro and crypto research; second, I am the Chief Investment Officer at Fundstrat Capital, which manages three ETFs, including Granny Shots—this is the fastest actively managed stock ETF to reach $3 billion in history; third, I am the chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, which currently holds the largest amount of Ethereum among institutions globally. If you want to follow us on social media, Fundstrat's account is "@fundstrat," and BitMine's account is "@bitMNR."

In the next approximately 25 minutes, I will cover several parts. First, why we remain very bullish on the crypto market—the core is tokenization. Second, why I believe the prices of crypto assets have bottomed out and why, in the next eight weeks, we may truly break the traditional four-year cycle of Bitcoin; this time I do not believe the market will continue to follow the four-year cycle. Third, Ethereum is the foundation of the future financial system, which is important because Ethereum will be at the core of the tokenization wave. Fourth, the value brought by tokenization is far more profound than most people currently understand, representing a significant structural unlocking for Wall Street. Fifth, why digital asset treasury companies—such as MicroStrategy or BitMine—will play a core role in this process. In fact, holding stocks of these companies is likely to outperform directly holding crypto assets themselves in the future.

Wall Street Remains Involved: Tokenization Reshapes the Financial System

Okay, the core theme of 2025 is tokenization. But before we dive in, let’s review the past decade. In December 2016, if you bought the S&P 500 index, your investment would have tripled, which is quite good. If you were a gold supporter and bought gold, you would have achieved four times the return. And if you were smart enough to buy Nvidia, your return would have reached 65 times. But if you bought Bitcoin ten years ago—when we first recommended it to Fundstrat clients—your investment would have grown to 112 times. Even more astonishing is Ethereum, which has returned nearly 500 times, even surpassing Bitcoin.

Now we come to 2025. Despite a lot of significant positive fundamentals this year, the market price performance has been very poor. Here are a few key points. First, the U.S. government has clearly shifted to support crypto assets and has set the tone for the entire Western world. Second, some U.S. state governments and the federal government have planned or executed strategic Bitcoin reserves—this is an extremely important event. Third, BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF has now become one of its top five fee-generating products—considering this product has only been out for a year and a half, this is very noteworthy. Meanwhile, JPMorgan—an institution that has long been critical of cryptocurrencies—has also started issuing JPM Coin on Ethereum. They are not the only ones joining; tokenization has now become one of the top strategic directions for major financial institutions.

In addition, several crypto-native products are quietly changing the decision-making processes of traditional finance. One of them is Polymarket, whose prediction market generates highly valuable information—at Fundstrat, we even call it "the closest thing to a crystal ball." Another example is Tether—despite being a single-product crypto-native company, it has now become one of the top ten most profitable "banks" globally.

But the real main theme of 2025 is tokenization. It all started with stablecoins, which is Ethereum's "ChatGPT moment." Wall Street suddenly realized that simply tokenizing the dollar could generate huge revenues. Now, financial institutions generally believe that tokenization will reshape the entire financial system.

Larry Fink even called it "the most exciting financial innovation since the invention of double-entry bookkeeping." I’m not sure how "exciting" bookkeeping really is, but clearly, this is a significant matter. And the image of Brian Armstrong appearing alongside Larry Fink on DealBook can be said to be quite symbolic.

If you have turned bearish due to the performance of the past decade or believe that the golden age of the crypto market has passed, I do not agree with that view. Currently, only 4.4 million Bitcoin wallets have a balance exceeding $10,000; meanwhile, nearly 900 million people globally hold retirement accounts exceeding this amount. If the future holding penetration of Bitcoin can approach the scale of retirement accounts, it would mean a 200-fold increase in adoption—still exponential, even hyper-speed growth. According to a Bank of America fund manager survey, 67% of fund managers still have no allocation to Bitcoin.

Wall Street wants to tokenize all assets—if we include real estate and various financial assets, the scale approaches $10 trillion. In an era dominated by smart agents, decentralized trust and security will become crucial—which is the core value that blockchain can provide.

Therefore, for me, the best era for the crypto industry is still ahead.

Has the Market Bottomed? Witnessing the Break of the Four-Year Cycle

Let me explain why I believe the prices of crypto assets have bottomed out. Despite gold returning 61% since the beginning of the year and the S&P index rising nearly 20%, the trading performance of the crypto market feels like it is in the depths of winter; Bitcoin and Ethereum are still negative returns this year. Jeff Dorman from Arca wrote a great article titled "The Selling That Nobody Can Explain." Many people have various theories about the decline of the crypto market, but none truly explain this round of decline.

I want to emphasize that Bitcoin was performing strongly until October 10. But after that, many people began trying to explain the subsequent decline: potential risks from quantum computing, the traditional four-year cycle, the largest liquidation event in history that occurred on October 10, AI concept stocks drawing market attention, MicroStrategy hinting at possibly selling some Bitcoin, MSCI considering removing digital asset treasury companies from the index, Tether's rating being downgraded, and so on. These factors may have had an impact, but the key point is that the crypto market was still up 36% before October 10, but then it fell straight down. In my view, the core reason for this decline is mainly deleveraging.

After the FTX collapse, market makers took eight weeks to recover, and the price discovery process only restarted then. Now, about seven and a half weeks have passed since a similar liquidity shock. About five weeks ago, we began collaborating with Tom DeMark on Bitcoin—he is a legendary market timing analyst. I have used his indicators at two key bottoms: once at the market low in March 2020 and once during the panic sell-off in April due to tariff-related events. He currently serves only two clients, and we are one of them.

Tom DeMark suggested that we significantly slow down our buying intensity for Ethereum. You can see from our internal data that our weekly ETH purchases have been cut in half from previous levels, down to 50,000 per week. But now we have started buying actively again. Last week we purchased nearly 100,000 ETH, which is double what we bought two weeks ago. And let me give you another hint: we are buying even more this week. The reason is simple; we believe Ethereum prices have bottomed out. We are very bullish on its future trend.

Now let’s talk about Bitcoin's four-year price cycle—historically, this four-year cycle (more precisely, 3.91 years) has almost accurately depicted all major tops and bottoms. But why does Bitcoin exhibit such a cycle? Our digital asset team has proposed five reasonable explanations: the halving cycle, monetary policy, leverage/margin debt structure, and two other factors—the copper-to-gold ratio and the ISM (Institute for Supply Management) index. The problem is that several of these variables no longer follow a four-year pattern.

For example, in the past, the copper-to-gold ratio typically exhibited a predictable four-year cyclical rhythm—and it was highly correlated with Bitcoin's movements. But this time it is not the case; this ratio should have peaked this year but did not show a turning point. Similarly, the ISM index has historically shown a clear four-year cycle, but it has remained below 50 for the past three and a half years. When we align the ISM with Bitcoin's movements, it even explains historical cycles better than Bitcoin's halving… yet this time, the ISM did not turn according to the cycle.

So my question is: if key variables like the industrial cycle and the copper-to-gold ratio no longer follow a four-year rhythm, why would Bitcoin continue to do so? I do not believe Bitcoin has topped out. The real validation point will come in January next year—if Bitcoin sets a new high in January, then the four-year cycle will be officially broken.

Ethereum as the Core of Future Finance

Now let me explain why Ethereum is the core of future finance. This year, Ethereum is experiencing its own "1971 moment." In 1971, the U.S. dollar abandoned the gold standard, and this turning point forced Wall Street to create new financial products to ensure the dollar's continued status as the global reserve currency. By 2025, the same thing is happening in the world of tokenization—except this time, what is being rebuilt is not just the dollar, but all asset classes, including stocks, bonds, and real estate, are being recreated on smart contract platforms. And that platform is Ethereum.

Today, every major financial institution is building blockchain-based products, and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is predominantly happening on Ethereum. Ethereum itself is also continuously upgrading—for example, the Fusaka upgrade completed today further enhances network capabilities. Even early Bitcoin developer Eric Voorhees recently stated, "Ethereum has won the smart contract war."

As for price, Ethereum has been in a range-bound oscillation for the past five years, but it is now beginning to show signs of a breakout. This is one of the reasons we are transforming BitMine into an Ethereum treasury company—we saw this trend coming early. More importantly, we believe the ETH/BTC ratio is also about to experience a significant breakout. If 2025 is the year when tokenization truly explodes, then the practical value of Ethereum will significantly increase.

What does this mean for price? I believe Bitcoin will rise to $250,000 in the coming months. If the ETH/BTC ratio returns to the average level of the past eight years, Ethereum's price will reach $12,000; if it returns to the 2021 high, it will be $22,000. And if Ethereum truly takes on the role of global financial infrastructure—which we firmly believe will happen—and the ETH/BTC ratio rises to 0.25, then Ethereum's price will correspond to about $62,000. At the current price of around $3,000, Ethereum is clearly severely undervalued.

The Long-Term Value of Tokenization

In the last few minutes, let’s talk about why the unlocking brought by tokenization is far greater than people imagine. Larry Fink believes we are at the starting point of "all assets beginning to be tokenized." The advantages of tokenization include: enabling fractional ownership of assets, lower costs, year-round global trading, higher transparency, and potentially higher liquidity. But these are just the basic elements. The real transformation occurs when tokenization combines with prediction markets.

Most people think of tokenization as simply splitting a painting into multiple tradable shares. But in fact, you can also "decompose" a business. For example, you can break down Tesla's different revenue streams and tokenize them separately; you can even tokenize the present value of Tesla's earnings in 2036—if you believe Musk's compensation plan will make that year particularly critical, this would be very meaningful. You can tokenize product lines, tokenize revenues from different regions, tokenize subscription service revenues, and even tokenize Musk's implied value in the market separately. All of this will provide Wall Street with new tools for price discovery and risk management.

BitMine is actively seeking projects to build the next generation of tokenization systems.

DAT: Connecting Traditional Finance and DeFi

Finally, let’s talk about Digital Asset Treasuries. A true Ethereum treasury company is essentially a crypto infrastructure company. Ethereum uses a Proof-of-Stake mechanism, where staking not only provides security for the network but also generates revenue—which will become the revenue source for treasury companies. Treasury companies act as a bridge between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi), and stablecoin issuers will ultimately want to stake ETH, as it will become the foundational currency layer of the entire system.

But the most important indicator of whether a crypto treasury company truly has influence in the market is the trading liquidity of its stock. MicroStrategy is currently the 17th most traded stock in the U.S.—its trading volume even surpasses JPMorgan. Although BitMine was only established a few months ago, it has already become the 39th most actively traded stock in the U.S.—its trading volume exceeds that of General Electric and is almost catching up to Salesforce.

Among about 80 crypto treasury-related companies, MicroStrategy and BitMine account for 92% of the total trading volume. MicroStrategy is creating a "digital credit vehicle" by financializing its balance sheet, while BitMine focuses on connecting Wall Street, Ethereum, and the DeFi ecosystem.

BitMine has now become the institution holding the most Ethereum globally—this is quite remarkable, especially considering we didn't hold a single ETH just five months ago. Our Maven staking program, once fully deployed, is expected to bring about a 2.9% staking yield to our holdings—this means approximately $400 million in revenue annually, averaging about $1.3 million daily. More importantly, all of this is achieved on a completely clean balance sheet: over $12 billion in Ethereum, a small amount of Bitcoin, a series of high-risk, high-reward moonshot investments, and about $900 million in cash.

Our strategy covers multiple directions—including moonshot investments, such as the "Proof-of-Human" project represented by Worldcoin as an ERC-20 token; staking infrastructure development; deep cooperation with the Ethereum Foundation; investments in the DeFi space; and the establishment of BitMine Labs. Leveraging BitMine's stock trading volume advantage and strong connections with Wall Street, we believe we can truly build a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto world.

BitMine is also growing into a user-facing brand with high recognition, supported by a large community and our own technological R&D investments. Our roadmap includes: building the Maven validator network, large-scale community engagement, and moonshot-level R&D projects, with the ultimate goal of capturing at least 5% of the Ethereum network share in the future.

My speech ends here. Thank you all.