Tom Lee Dubai Speech: The Crypto Super Cycle Is Steady, Why I Still Persist

Author: Tom Lee, Translation: Wu Shuo Blockchain

At the 2025 Binance Blockchain Week held in Dubai from December 3 to 4, co-founder of Fundstrat and Chairman of BitMine, Tom Lee, delivered a speech titled “The Crypto Supercycle Remains Steady,” systematically elaborating on his long-term bullish outlook on the crypto market. The core points include: why 2025’s main theme is “tokenization,” why he believes Bitcoin and Ethereum prices have bottomed, why the traditional four-year cycle is being broken, Ethereum’s role as infrastructure in the global financial system, and why Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies will play a key role in the next wave of crypto financialization. He also explained BitMine’s strategy, the business logic behind the Ethereum treasury model, and predicted the next phase of financial innovation driven by market and tokenization integration.

Below is Tom Lee’s speech content:

Opening Remarks

Tom Lee: Hello everyone. I’m glad to be here with you at this moment. As you all know, since October, the crypto market has experienced a tough period, with increasing pessimism. I know many people are already ready to give up. Therefore, I actually think now is a very suitable time to discuss the crypto market and why I remain so bullish on Ethereum.

So, today’s topic is “The Crypto Supercycle Remains Steady.” Let me briefly introduce my background. I currently hold three positions: First, I am the Head of Research at Fundstrat Global, an organization focused on macro and crypto research; second, I am the CIO of Fundstrat Capital, which manages three ETFs, including Granny Shots—this is the fastest actively managed stock ETF to reach $3 billion in assets; third, I am Chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, which is currently the institution holding the largest amount of Ethereum 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 being tokenization. Second, why I believe crypto asset prices have bottomed, and why within the next eight weeks, we might truly break the traditional four-year Bitcoin cycle—this time, I don’t think the market will continue to follow the four-year pattern. Third, Ethereum as the infrastructure of the future financial system—this is very important because in the wave of tokenization, Ethereum will be at the core. Fourth, the value brought by tokenization is far more profound than most people currently understand, representing a huge structural unlock for Wall Street. Fifth, why digital asset treasury companies—such as MicroStrategy or BitMine—will play a central role in this process. In fact, holding stocks of these companies may outperform directly holding crypto assets in the future.

Wall Street’s Continued Engagement: Tokenization Reshaping the Financial System

Alright, the core theme for 2025 is tokenization. But before diving in, let’s review the past decade. In December 2016, if you bought the S&P 500 index, your investment would have tripled—quite a good return. If you were a gold supporter and bought gold, you would have gained four times. And if you were smart enough to buy Nvidia, your return would be 65 times. But if you bought Bitcoin ten years ago—the first time we recommended Bitcoin to Fundstrat clients—your investment would have grown 112 times. Even more astonishing is Ethereum, with nearly 500x returns, surpassing Bitcoin.

Now, approaching 2025, despite many major fundamental positives this year, market prices have been terrible. Here are some key points. First, the US government has clearly shifted to support crypto assets, setting the tone for the entire Western world. Second, some US states and the federal government have planned or implemented strategic Bitcoin reserves—an extremely significant event. Third, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF has become one of its top five revenue-generating products—note that this product has only been around for a year and a half, which is noteworthy. Meanwhile, JPMorgan—an institution that has long been critical of cryptocurrencies—has started issuing JPM Coin on Ethereum. They are not alone; now tokenization has become one of the top strategic directions for major financial institutions.

Additionally, several crypto-native products are quietly changing traditional financial decision-making. One is Polymarket, whose prediction markets generate extremely high informational value—at Fundstrat, we even call it “the closest thing to a crystal ball.” Another is Tether—despite being a single-product crypto-native company, it has become one of the top ten most profitable “banks” globally.

But the real main theme for 2025 is tokenization. It all begins with stablecoins, which is Ethereum’s “ChatGPT moment.” Wall Street has suddenly realized: simply tokenizing the US dollar can generate huge revenue. 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 entirely sure how “exciting” bookkeeping really is, but clearly, this is a significant development. And the scene where Brian Armstrong and Larry Fink appear together at DealBook is quite symbolic.

If you have turned bearish because of the past decade’s performance, or believe the golden age of crypto is over, I disagree. Currently, only 4.4 million Bitcoin wallets hold over $10,000; meanwhile, nearly 900 million people worldwide have retirement accounts exceeding that amount. If Bitcoin’s future penetration rate approaches that of retirement accounts, that would mean a 200x increase in adoption—still exponential, even super-fast growth. According to a survey by Bank of America fund managers, 67% of fund managers still have no exposure 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 intelligent agents, decentralized trust and security will become crucial—and this is exactly what blockchain can provide.

Therefore, for me, the best days of the crypto industry are still ahead.

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

Let me explain why I believe crypto asset prices have bottomed. Despite gold’s year-to-date return of 61% and the S&P’s nearly 20% rise, the crypto market’s trading performance has been like deep winter; Bitcoin and Ethereum are still negative this year. Jeff Dorman of Arca wrote a very good article titled “The Selling That Nobody Can Explain.” Many theories exist about the decline, but none truly explain this round of sell-off.

I want to emphasize that Bitcoin performed strongly until October 10. But after that, many started trying to explain the subsequent decline: risks from quantum computing, the traditional four-year cycle, the largest liquidation event in history on October 10, AI concept stocks drawing market attention, MicroStrategy hinting at possibly selling some Bitcoin, MSCI considering removing digital asset treasury companies from indices, Tether’s rating downgrade, and so on. These factors may have influenced the market, but the key point is—Bitcoin rose 36% before October 10, then plummeted straight down. In my view, the core reason for this decline is deleveraging.

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

DeMark advised us to significantly slow down Ethereum buying. You can see from our internal data that our weekly ETH purchases have halved from previous levels, down to 50,000 ETH per week. But now we are actively buying again. Last week, we bought nearly 100,000 ETH, twice as much as two weeks ago. And here’s a tip: we bought even more this week. The reason is simple—we believe Ethereum has bottomed. We are very bullish on its future trend.

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

For example, in the past, the copper-to-gold ratio exhibited a predictable four-year cycle—closely aligned with Bitcoin’s movements. But this time, it’s not the case; the ratio was supposed to peak this year but did not show a turning point. Similarly, the ISM index historically displayed a clear four-year cycle, but recently, it has remained below 50 for three and a half years. When aligning ISM with Bitcoin’s movements, it even explains historical cycles better than Bitcoin halving… yet this time, ISM did not turn as per the cycle.

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

Ethereum as the Future Financial Core

Now, let me explain why Ethereum is the core of future finance. This year, Ethereum is experiencing its own “1971 moment.” In 1971, the US dollar left the gold standard, forcing 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 tokenized world—what’s different is that this time, not only the dollar but all asset classes—including stocks, bonds, 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 mostly happening on Ethereum. Ethereum itself is continuously upgrading—for example, the recently completed Fusaka upgrade further enhances network capacity. Even early Bitcoin developer Eric Voorhees recently said, “Ethereum has won the smart contract war.”

Regarding price, Ethereum has been range-bound over the past five years, but signs of breakout are now emerging. This is one of the reasons we transformed BitMine into an Ethereum treasury company—we saw this trend early. More importantly, we believe the ETH/BTC ratio is also about to make a significant breakthrough. If 2025 is the year of true tokenization explosion, Ethereum’s practical value will rise sharply.

What does this mean for prices? I believe Bitcoin will rise to $250,000 in the coming months. If the ETH/BTC ratio returns to its eight-year average, Ethereum’s price could reach $12,000; if it reaches the 2021 high, then $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 would correspond to about $62,000. At the current price of around $3,000, Ethereum is clearly undervalued.

The Long-Term Value of Tokenization

In the final few minutes, let’s discuss why the unlocking potential of tokenization is even 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, 24/7 global trading, higher transparency, and potentially higher liquidity. But these are just the basics. The real revolution occurs when tokenization combines with prediction markets.

Most people think of tokenization as splitting a painting into tradable shares. But in fact, you can also decompose a company into “elements.” For example, you could tokenize Tesla’s different revenue streams separately; you could even tokenize the present value of Tesla’s 2036 earnings—if you believe Elon Musk’s compensation plan will make that year particularly significant, that could be very meaningful. You can tokenize product lines, regional revenues, subscription income, or even the implied value of Elon Musk himself in the market. 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 (DAT). Truly Ethereum treasury companies are essentially crypto infrastructure firms. Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake mechanism not only secures the network but also generates staking rewards—which become the revenue source for treasury companies. These companies act as bridges between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi), and stablecoin issuers will ultimately want to stake ETH because it will serve as the foundational currency layer of the entire system.

But the most important metric to measure a crypto treasury company’s influence in the market is the liquidity of its stock. MicroStrategy is currently the 17th most traded stock in the US, with trading volume even surpassing JPMorgan. BitMine, although only established a few months ago, has already become the 39th most active stock in the US, with trading volume exceeding General Electric and nearly catching up with Salesforce.

Among about 80 crypto treasury-related companies, MicroStrategy and BitMine account for 92% of all trading volume. MicroStrategy is building 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 largest amount of Ethereum globally—remarkably, just five months ago, we held no ETH at all. Our Maven staking program, once fully deployed, is expected to generate about 2.9% staking yield on our holdings—that’s roughly $400 million annually, about $1.3 million daily. More importantly, all this is based on a completely clean balance sheet: over $12 billion worth of 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 like Worldcoin, a Proof-of-Human project represented as an ERC-20 token; staking infrastructure development; deep cooperation with the Ethereum Foundation; investments in DeFi; and the formation of BitMine Labs. Leveraging BitMine’s 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, highly recognizable brand, supported by a large community and our own technological R&D. Our roadmap includes: building the Maven validator network, large-scale community engagement, moonshot R&D projects, and ultimately capturing at least 5% of the Ethereum network in the future.

That concludes my speech. Thank you all.