Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.
Tom Lee has been buying ETH at a mind-boggling pace.
And he has to, because he has competition nipping at his heels.
Tom Lee’s BitMine just became the world’s largest corporate ETH holder, crossing 1.15M ETH (~$5B) in ETH treasury after adding 317,000+ ETH in just one week.
Five billion dollars worth of ETH is about 1% of ETH’s circulating supply, purchased in less than 2 months.
That pales in comparison to his target of 5% (~$25B at current prices), so it looks like he’s going to keep buying.
Which is what his BMNR shareholders are betting on, with BMNR popping 25% on Friday and then another 15% on Monday (was up 30% at one point).
But the thing is – Tom Lee can’t stop buying if he wants to be the top ETH holder.
Because Joe Lubin’s SharpLink (SBET) has been stacking its own ETH trove, expected to disclose 600,000 ETH ($2.5B) in holdings today after a major buying spree.
And they’ve got plenty of ammo themselves, after raising another $900M in the past week.
“Just because digital asset treasuries have gone up and you don’t own it doesn’t mean it’s a bubble… A bubble is just your friend making money.” – Tom Lee
This is Ethereum’s MicroStrategy moment, but with two deep-pocketed players instead of one.
And they are accumulating at a much faster pace than Saylor did, as they are literally racing each other to acquire as much ETH as possible at current prices.
That has such a massive impact on the market (already seen).
Each purchase is taking ETH off the market, tightening supply while adding credibility to ETH as a corporate reserve asset.
It’s not just the buy pressure that’s driving ETH up – it’s the “talking heads” and narratives being formed.
Tom Lee (and Joe Lubin) are going on CNBC and talking the ETH thesis.
Now Wall St is catching on, and talking about how the staking yield, DeFi and composability give it a cash-flow edge over Bitcoin, making it more appealing.
We’ve seen that impact in the ETF inflows, with ETH greatly outperforming BTC in ETF inflows over the past 3 weeks.
Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:
