저자: TomLee · 외국인
요약 보기
Tom Lee는 이더리움을 금융 정산 레이어로 보고 비트마인(Bitmain)의 ETH 보유(약 578만 개, 세계 최대)와 스테이킹 수익(주당 약 주 600만 달러, 연 약 3억 달러)을 근거로 강세를 주장한다. AI 조정은 일시적 디레버리징이며 금 1% 보유를 권하고, 금리 인하와 인플레 둔화를 전망한다. 비트코인은 장기 강세 관점을 유지하면서 이더리움을 더 선호한다.
다듬은 글
The staking revenue we generate today at the current Ethereum price is around $6 million per week. About 300 million per year. If Ethereum reaches 5,000, that would be close to a billion per year. And that will be almost 20 million per week. But our perpetual preferred stock offer has dividend requirements of 30 million per year.
So we can easily fund our preferred shares with staking income. So I think we have a simple capital structure. We are betting on the future of Ethereum as a settlement layer not just for Wall Street, but also for how robots communicate. And we are part of this ecosystem. So I think you should view Bitmain as a very, very integrated Ethereum company.
Hello everyone, welcome to Everyday Finance. Renowned market analysts Tom Lee and Raul Pal argue that the cryptocurrency ecosystem is entering its most transformative phase of growth, driven by dual catalysts: the integration . Tom Lee emphasizes that Ethereum is undergoing a structural shift from speculative assets like memecoins to mainstream real-world financial applications, aided by expected regulatory clarity and corporate adoption of asset tokenization.
Meanwhile, Raul Pal sees recent market volatility as an initial swing within a macro supercycle of AI investment, pointing to the huge ongoing capital expenditures of large tech firms that will eventually create synergies with digital assets. Together, their views suggest that despite short-term market turbulence, the convergence of regulatory evolution, corporate tokenization, and AI infrastructure is laying the groundwork for unprecedented institutional adoption and long-term market expansion across the crypto landscape.
Well, I think our strategy is working this year because, you know, if you look at what we like, our best performer is our Granny Shots ETF, GRNY, and it has outperformed the S&P 500 by 120 basis points year to date. And it's one of the top ten funds this year. So, with Granny, we are ahead of over 92% of all fund managers.
And that's because we stick to long-term themes. You know, we still believe in AI as a promising story , and we still believe in cybersecurity and safety. And we are betting on the Fed easing monetary policy , even though the market has turned hawkish. In fact, small-cap companies have been doing exceptionally well this year, and that's perhaps the biggest hint that the Fed will be dovish.
So I would say we haven't made a lot of changes to our view on Granny for the second half of the year, and I think we're sticking to the view that earnings growth is accelerating, and now we're in reporting season. I think the story of artificial intelligence is quite relevant. But we are ready to invest in ideas derived from it.
For example, the G7, software, and cryptoassets are derivatives of AI. And they are starting to show better results. Another point: I think the bond market is too hawkish , expecting the Fed to raise rates. Our bet is that inflation will be lower than expected. People are too focused on oil as a driver of inflation, but we've already experienced the oil shock .
So I think the peak inflationary impact from oil is behind us. Inflation fundamentals are weakening as the housing market is sluggish and wages are not accelerating. And this will allow the Fed to actually lower rates. Let me give you an example: when AI and memory stocks were rising, we were criticized because we didn't "stock up" on these assets.
We have a stake in them, but when the 40% crash happened, Granny performed better because we focused on long-term ideas in AI. Let me clarify: Bitmain's Eth is the largest Ethereum treasury and, in fact, the largest Ethereum owner in the world, with almost 5.78 million coins. But this is not the first Ethereum treasury.
She was probably the fourth or fifth. However, we became the largest and just celebrated a year of operation because we had a very simple strategy. We kept the capital structure as simple as possible and sought to accumulate Ethereum. That's how we were able to grow so quickly, and I think we're five times bigger than the next largest vault, Ethereum.
Comparing us to MicroStrategy—I'm still pretty optimistic about it, by the way. We even keep it in Granny funds because I believe in Bitcoin. But we take a completely different approach. First...Well, the two biggest differences, or maybe it's worth highlighting three. The first is the underlying asset.
Bitcoin is a means of saving, and the ecosystem around it strives for, quote, “ ossification” of Bitcoin. That is, do not make any changes so that it always remains a store of value, like digital gold. Instead, Ethereum is an asset that generates income of approximately 3% per annum. And this is thanks to the proof-of-stake mechanism.
The security of the network is provided by those who stake ETH, and in return they receive a reward . The ecosystem is growing, and it is the largest ecosystem in the crypto world, even larger than Bitcoin. And they are trying to position, and so far successfully, Ethereum as a financial settlement layer for Wall Street.
So, the entire financial infrastructure will likely run on stablecoins that run on ETH. Ethereum. The second difference is that MicroStrategy has perhaps a somewhat passive approach to Bitcoin. This means they own it and want to create digital credit. Bitmain is very active in the ecosystem. We have funded three, we are the lead investor in three spin- offs from the Ethereum Foundation.
They are all aimed at strengthening Ethereum and are focused on either improving the price or strengthening the ecosystem, and that's not all. So we are really helping to shape the future of Ethereum. And the third is the complexity of the balance. MicroStrategy is designed to have a complex balance.
They have convertible bonds, four classes of preferred stock, and common stock. And in some cases, these components of the balance compete with each other. And since Bitcoin has no intrinsic return, they have to sell shares to pay dividends. Bitmain has a very simple capital structure. Has common stock, and we just issued perpetual preferred stock.
The staking revenue we generate today at the current Ethereum price is around $6 million per week. Approximately $300 million per year. If the price of Ethereum reaches 5,000, that would be close to a billion per year. And that will be almost 20 million per week. But our perpetual preferred stock has a dividend obligation of 30 million per year.
So, we can easily fund our preferred shares with staking income. So I think we have a simple capital structure. We are betting on the future of Ethereum as a payment layer not just for Wall Street, but also for how robots communicate. And we are part of the ecosystem. So I think you should look at Bitmain as a very, very integrated Ethereum company.
Market strategist Tom Lee argues that cryptocurrency is undergoing a profound structural transition from retail speculation and memecoins to institutional-level financial infrastructure , aided by the adoption of stablecoins, tokenization of real assets, and support from large corporations such as Robinhood, which is building its tokenization infrastructure on Ethereum.
This shift is further accelerated by expected regulatory clarity through the Clarity Act, which promises to unlock unprecedented amounts of institutional capital by removing legal uncertainty for traditional financial firms. Lee directly links this evolution of digital assets to the broader AI and technology megatrend, describing the recent market declines not as the end of the AI boom, but as a temporary forced deleveraging that has purged the market of weak leveraged holders and hedge funds.
Noting that short-term volatility should not overshadow long-term performance trends, Lee highlights stable earnings and significant capital investment in AI infrastructure, arguing that as investor confidence and liquidity return to innovative growth sectors, major digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum are poised for significant renewed growth .
Yes. I mean, if someone owns Ethereum, then they can buy the coin. Then they can steak it. You know, everything will be fine with them. But there are two types of investors who cannot do this. The first are institutional investors. You know, big asset managers that operate huge funds can't buy ETH, the native token, because they would have to maintain a crypto wallet.
But they can buy shares. Bitmain is included in the Russell 1000 large-cap index and is traded on the NYSE. So this is the only large-cap Ethereum stock they can buy today. So , if you're a big manager in Boston and you want access to Ethereum, you should buy Bitmain. By the way, the Russell 1000 is the largest and most widely used benchmark index.
The second type of investor is someone who wants to use options and derivatives or simply wants to gain more exposure to ETH. Bitmain outperforms Ethereum during growth. Bitmain has a number of options that are traded. In fact, it is also traded in perpetual markets. So this is perhaps the best way for active investors in the stock market to gain access to Bitmain.
And it's actually a much larger universe, because the universe of equity investors is 240 trillion. The universe of native crypto investors is only a few hundred billion. So I think it's better to bet on what the stock world will do and that they will eventually buy Bitmain. Well, I think you're describing a bear market, you know, during bear markets people don't talk about stocks, you know, when Apple was down, nobody was talking about Apple, right?
So we know that price drives sentiment and the crypto market is in a downtrend, but you expect people to be pessimistic on the bottom. Actually, that's what creates the bottom, you know, is when you reduce people's leverage and then lower expectations. Cryptocurrency has so many catalysts . I mean, since the end of June, Ethereum has outperformed memory stocks by 72 percentage points.
I mean , that's pretty significant. You know, people lost 40% on memory, and gained almost 30% on Ethereum. And now the " Transparency Law" is, as they say, one step away from adoption. This will open the floodgates, as the Transparency Act will establish a single authority to oversee the entire crypto economy.
And this does not exist today. Right now, everything is regulated at the state level, and regulation is very fragmented. Japan and other countries are already implementing a similar version of the Transparency Act. Russia just passed its own. So the US obviously has to catch up. This will facilitate the institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies.
This is a much larger market than anything that has existed in the cryptosphere before. Therefore, I believe that if someone has been in the crypt for a long time, they were in the capture phase. I would call it Ethereum 1.0 because it was meme coins and NFTs. The market of the future is stablecoins.
Payment systems, you know, Robinhood wants to tokenize everything, and by the way, they could choose any blockchain. They built the Robinhood chain on Ethereum. They launched it. This is already an incredible success: over a billion dollars in volume daily on the Robinhood chain, and it's generating revenue— Robinhood could make a billion a year on this newly launched chain.
This is a huge, simply colossal success for them. So I think every firm on Wall Street is watching what Robinhood has done and realizing that there is a lot to be made by tokenizing assets on the Ethereum network . Well, you know, gold made a huge leap. You know, gold is not as volatile as other assets because it is a store of value, and if you look at the dynamics over the last three years, this is probably a unique case in its entire history.
I'm talking about 12 centuries of gold history, it was a five standard deviation movement. So it is quite logical that gold should consolidate this growth. And I think, well, I don't know, maybe it has a 10% potential for decline, but that's the maximum. I believe that gold has proven its ability to be a reliable store of value.
Therefore, at Fundstrat, we quite reasonably recommend having part of your capital in gold. I don't know if it's less than in bitcoin, but let's say 1% in gold . And I think it's a good hedge because in the future, whether it's debt uncertainty or AI disruptions or social unrest—these are the things that could make gold incredibly important in the future.
And nothing has changed, because in an AI world, gold's role as a safe haven and store of value is likely to remain unchanged. So, I think, you know, everyone should have it, but, you know, there's been significant growth, so consolidation is needed. Drawing a direct parallel between the current AI market correction and the dramatic declines in Cisco shares during the Internet boom of the 1990s, Tom Lee argues that investors consistently misread severe cyclical pullbacks as the end of a technological revolution, while history shows that transformative breakthroughs invariably go through painful consolidation before yielding their maximum long-term returns.
Unlike the “ dot-com bubble,” which was fueled by unprofitable speculative companies, today’s AI infrastructure expansion is fueled by profitable tech giants with strong cash flows, making huge investments driven by real demand for computing power and corporate data center integration, not market hype.
With enterprise-level AI adoption still in its early stages and hyperscalers dedicating long-term resources to expanding computing infrastructure, Lee and Raul Pal argue that this cycle of increased spending will continue for years, ultimately bolstering liquidity and investor confidence in related innovative asset classes, including blockchain and cryptocurrencies, as leading firms leverage their strong balance sheets to dominate the global race for computing power.
Comments 0