Navigating the Crypto Landscape: Price Predictions and Treasury Strategies with Tom Lee

Welcome to FinTech TV.

I'm Remy Blair.

As we roar our way through 2025, a monumental year for crypto from Bitcoin to East to the regulatory landscape.

Well, joining me here at the New York Stock Exchange today is Tom Lee, Fundstra co-founder and bit Miner.

And Tom, great to have you here.

Thank you for joining.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Well, here we are, the beginning of the second half of 2025.

We're keeping a close eye on EP as well as Bitcoin.

So tell me, what do you make of some of the bullish price targets out there for the crypto majors?

You know, I think they're actually well grounded.

I think the simple way for someone to think about Bitcoin, if they're like, why should I buy Bitcoin at 100,000. is that it's replacing gold and gold is a $23 trillion market.

Bitcoin's worth like $1.3 million.

So Bitcoin's only 10% of the way there to becoming digital gold.

Ethereum is basically the financial system on the blockchain, and the crypto, the chat GPT moment for Ethereum came from the Circle IPO and the stablecoins because suddenly the banks realized.

This is a product that people are really using, stablecoins, and stablecoins, the majority of them run on Ethereum.

Scott Bessett thinks it's a $4 trillion market.

That's exponential growth for Ethereum.

So I think Ethereum has been stuck at $3700 for really 5 years.

If it was valued at the same valuation as Circle's IPO, you're actually closer to 12,000, so it's undervalued.

Yeah, and Tom, the New York Stock Exchange is your stomping ground, and as you mentioned, Circle went public, and we're watching the IPO very quickly, but here we are a week after Cryptoweek and the Genius Act has passed.

We're still keeping a close eye on those two other acts. the anti-CPBC Act as well as the Clarity Act.

But when we're talking about use cases here and of course institutional as well as retail investment, give us your take on why we're seeing so many crypto treasury companies right now.

Well, There's a lot of reasons for someone to want to own a crypto treasury company.

Because someone will say, I like Ethereum and I'm just going to own it, so they can buy it in Coinbase or they can buy the Ethereum ETL, but then their holdings of that Ethereum, the number of tokens will never change.

These crypto treasury companies, if they have the right management team, can dramatically increase how much Ethereum per share you own or even Bitcoin.

I'll give you an example when microstrategy.

Started its crypto treasury strategy in 2019, there was $1.90 worth of Bitcoin per share.

Today it's $227.

Of which like more than 3/4 of that was due to their treasury strategy, not Bitcoin's price going up.

So if you find the right management team and you know a company like Bitmine has a good management team, then we can increase someone's Ethereum help per share and it'll dramatically outperform Ethereum.

Yeah, and that is an area we'll continue to keep our eyes on.

But if you're a retail investor out there and you're hearing about different products coming to market, whether we're talking about ETFs or different types of products, what do investors, retail investors need to keep an eye on, especially given all the institutional activity?

Well, They have to tread with some eyes open because not everything is created equally.

Like not every blockchain is the same.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are the blue chips.

Solana too probably, and not every Treasury stock is built the same.

Cathy Woods says this is a winner take most business.

So there's micro strategy and then there's a dozen other Bitcoin crypto treasury companies, but microstrategy has by far the most blue chip, and institutions are going to buy the blue chip ones.

And you recently assumed a new role as fitline chairman.

So tell us about why and what your vision is.

Well, to me, part of it is is the belief that Ethereum is entering, you know, a decade where its relevance is going to grow dramatically.

I think it is the most important macro trading crypto right now, which is Wall Street is coming onto the blockchain.

And Ethereum is the preferred blockchain because it's a legally recognized, operates in the US legally, but it's also programmable, so you can tokenize dollars and stocks and real estate on Ethereum, and today the majority of all these tokenized assets are taking place on Ethereum.

So Bitmine is a macro bet.

On Ethereum's relevance growing in the future, yeah, and Tom, finally, before I let you go, while we're talking about Ethereum coming into 2025, many of us were paying attention to catalysts such as the Petra upgrade as well as the regulatory landscape.

So moving into the second half of 2025, what are you paying attention to?

Well, I think that Ethereum's community has been rejuvenated because the price of Ethereum's gone from 1700 to 3800 that really has galvanized the community to actually start working back on Petherium.

And I think that there is a real effort for the layer 2s, which is where a lot of innovations in place, is also paying and absorbing gas fees for layer 1, so that you need to work in sync, otherwise you don't want the Ethereum blockchain to get stale.

And while I have you here, what are your price targets for Bitcoin and for E for 2025?

So that's roughly 5 months.

I think Bitcoin could be 250,000.

I think Ethereum probably is closer to 15,000, maybe 20,000 by the end of the year.

OK, Tom, well, great talking to you.

Thank you so much for joining me here at the Exchange and for joining us at Fintech TV.

Thank you.

Thank you.