Fundstrat’s Tom Lee is joining a little known bitcoin miner aiming to become the biggest publicly traded holder of ether.
Lee, a high-profile market strategist known for his prescient bitcoin price forecasts and stock predictions, has been appointed chairman of the board of directors of BitMine Immersion Technologies, effective Monday. The company also announced a $250 million private placement to implement a buying strategy around ether, which it aims to make its primary treasury reserve asset while continuing with its core bitcoin mining business.
Lee’s appointment comes amid a groundswell of interest around stablecoins following the successful IPO of stablecoin issuer Circle at the beginning of the month and positive momentum pushing potential stablecoin legislation through Congress.
“The financial services industry and crypto are converging and it really started with stablecoins, which is the ChatGPT of crypto because it’s viral adoption by consumers, business banks and now even Visa,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday. “Underneath the stablecoin industry is Ethereum – that is really the backbone and architecture of stablecoins so it’s important to create a project that accumulates Ethereum to essentially protect and have some influence on the network.”
The company will monitor the value of ether held per company share as a key performance metric going forward, Lee added, similar to MicroStrategy’s bitcoin-per-share metric “BTC Yield.” BitMine can increase the value of ETH held per share “by a combination of reinvestment of the company’s cash flows, capital markets activities, and by the change in value of ETH,” Lee said in a statement.
Companies are increasingly looking past bitcoin for crypto treasury management strategies. BitMine joins the publicly listed betting platform SharpLink Gaming, which initiated an ether treasury strategy in May and appointed Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as chairman of its board of directors. DeFi Development is focused on a similar strategy for the Solana token.
Ahead of this transaction, BitMine had a very tiny market value of just $26 million with lightly traded shares that were down 45% on the year.
