Tom Lee says public firms now steward Ethereum as Bitmine and Sharplink hold 7% of ETH supply and earn staking rewards.
Ethereum News
Corporate treasuries have quietly taken over stewardship of the Ethereum (ETH) network, says Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat and chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies. He made the remarks during his keynote at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris.
Lee said the nonprofit Ethereum Foundation has cut its network holdings to 100,000 ETH, or 0.1% of supply. Public companies have moved in to fill the gap as validators.
Bitmine and Sharplink together hold 7% of circulating ETH, according to Lee. Their treasuries generate $500 million in staking rewards each year, which Lee said now funds the ecosystem in place of foundation grants.
Bitmine sits near the center of that shift. The firm bought 111,942 ETH last week, worth about $237 million, its largest purchase since December. That lifted its holdings to nearly 5.4 million ETH, about 4.47% of circulating supply.
Lee tied the firm’s model to an upcoming wave of machine activity. He said robots would soon handle most internet traffic and would need to pay one another instantly, and he argued blockchain handles authentication, identity, and payment speed better than bank rails. He pointed to Andreessen Horowitz, which has called the trend a "great unification."
$250K Target Rests on AI and Tokenization
That backdrop frames Lee's price call. He said ETH could eventually reach $250,000, driven by tokenization and AI, though he gave no timeline. ETH traded at $1,906 on June 2, down 6% over the prior 24 hours.
Lee said the validator model outperforms simply holding the coin. He cited a six-month period in which spot ETH returned 22% against 500% for Bitmine's staking structure.
He also flagged a near-term milestone for the firm, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker BMNR. Lee said Bitmine qualifies for the Russell 1000, with an inclusion date of June 26, and he noted that more than $4 trillion is benchmarked to the index.
Lee said a $250,000 ETH price would value Bitmine stock at $5,000, calling it a bargain at $18 currently, and added that investors bearish on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum now are "selling at the bottom."
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