Tom Lee Calls for 100x Ethereum ‘Supercycle’ Like Bitcoin as BitMine Adds More ETH

Publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies added 54,156 ETH—currently worth about $170 million—to its balance sheet over the last week, the firm announced on Monday.

BitMine now holds 3,559,879 ETH valued at more than $11.1 billion, making it the largest publicly traded Ethereum treasury in the world, and the second largest crypto treasury overall behind Michael Saylor’s Strategy and its $61 billion Bitcoin stash. The Ethereum-centric firm also holds 192 Bitcoin (about $18 million worth) and $607 million in cash.

Like Strategy, BitMine keeps accumulating ETH regardless of its price action. The second-largest crypto asset by market capitalization has dropped more than 11% in the last week, and is now 35% off its August all-time high.

Myriad predictors are almost evenly split on Ethereum’s next move, predicting a nearly 51% likelihood of ETH falling to a price of $2,500 rather than rising to $4,000. But those odds have flipped several times over the last 24 hours as the price of Ethereum has shifted. (Disclaimer: Myriad is a product of Decrypt‘s parent company, Dastan.)

Despite the recent losses, BitMine Chairman Tom Lee is still calling for an Ethereum “supercycle,” predicting that prices have not peaked for this cycle. He further suggested, in an X post, that Ethereum could see a 100x rise in price in the long run, similar to Bitcoin’s spike since Lee’s firm Fundstrat first recommended holding the asset back in 2017.

“We look at five explanations for the crypto price cycle and conclude that two have important explanatory value,” said Lee in a statement. “Both of these suggest a crypto cycle top likely 12-36 months away.”

According to Lee, the market is still recovering from the record-breaking crypto liquidation event in October, which saw more than $19 billion positions wiped away in a single day. The lingering weakness, he added, lends some credence to the speculation that a market maker may have been severely impacted during the crash. 

“When a market maker has a ‘hole’ on their balance sheet, they are seeking to raise capital and are reducing their liquidity functions in the market,” he said. “This is the equivalent of QT (quantitative tightening) for crypto, and has the effect of dampening prices. In 2022, this QT effect lasted for 6-8 weeks. And this is probably happening today.”

Lee, who was an early Bitcoin bull, has remained bullish on year-end predictions. In early November, he suggested that Bitcoin could run to $150,000-$200,000 before the end of the year, with Ethereum potentially rising to $7,000. 

While Lee acts as the chairman and the most vocal spokesperson for BitMine, the firm added a new CEO on Friday. Shares of BMNR continued their slide after the opening bell on Monday, dropping by nearly 6% to change hands at $32.37.

BMNR is now down 35% in the last month, underperforming Ethereum and Bitcoin, which have dropped about 19% and 12%, respectively.