There is Thomas Jong Lee, known as the "Wall Street Bull" and often called Tom Lee, a famous American stock market strategist, research director, and financial commentator. He was born in Westland, Michigan, as the third child of a Korean immigrant family, with a father who was a psychiatrist and a mother who transitioned from a housewife to a Subway chain store operator.
Lee subsequently entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in finance and accounting. According to a January 2021 Wall Street Journal report, Lee often relaxes by cooking after a busy day, particularly enjoying trying to recreate his mother's Korean dishes. He is low-key, scholarly in style, rarely refutes critics, and instead attempts to respond with data. In an interview, he once said, "I cannot refute critics. I don't know what will happen. The stock market doesn't care about my opinion, so I can only try to understand what the market is saying."
Lee's Wall Street career began in the 1990s, working at Kidder Peabody and Salomon Smith Barney. He joined JPMorgan in 1999 and served as the firm's chief equity strategist from 2007 until his departure in 2014. During his tenure, he gained media attention for his optimistic market views and was involved in industry controversies due to his commitment to critical research.
In 2002, Lee, as a JPMorgan telecommunications analyst, released a research report on wireless operator Nextel, questioning the authenticity of its customer churn rate and bad debt provision accounting. On the day of the report's release, Nextel's stock price briefly dropped 8%, followed by a strong rebuttal from the company's top executives. The CFO and general counsel separately called JPMorgan's research director and legal department, accusing Lee of using misleading assumptions and even suspecting that he had leaked parts of the report to specific investors before its official publication. JPMorgan subsequently conducted a two-week internal investigation, reviewing his emails and call records, ultimately confirming that Lee had not engaged in any misconduct. The Wall Street Journal reported this under the headline "Unhappy Firm Bites Back," sparking widespread discussion about the independence of Wall Street analysts. This incident became a representative conflict in Lee's career and established his research style of adhering to data-driven approaches, not catering to market and investment bank client pressures.
In 2014, Lee co-founded the independent research firm Fundstrat Global Advisors and became its research director, successfully transitioning from a traditional investment bank strategist to an independent research institution leader. He was one of the first Wall Street strategists to incorporate Bitcoin into mainstream valuation systems. In 2017, Lee released a report titled "A framework for valuing bitcoin as a substitute for gold," first proposing Bitcoin's potential to partially replace gold as a store of value. The framework was constructed based on three key parameters: the average annual growth of the U.S. monetary base (around 6.5%), the multiple of alternative asset values to monetary supply (approximately 400% in the model), and Bitcoin's potential market share in this alternative value system (with a model base of 5%). According to this valuation model, Bitcoin's theoretical value center in 2022 was $20,300, with sensitivity analysis showing a range between $12,000 and $55,000. Lee noted in the report that as the total market value of crypto assets exceeded $500 billion, central banks and institutional investors might consider incorporating them into foreign exchange reserves and asset allocation.
In the same year, Lee also introduced his short-term valuation model on a Business Insider program, based on Metcalfe's law (network value is proportional to the square of user numbers). Using the number of independent Bitcoin addresses as a user proxy and performing regression analysis after multiplying by average daily transaction volume per user, the model could explain approximately 94% of Bitcoin price changes since 2013.
Lee's research style emphasizes data-driven approaches and historical analogies, particularly excelling in medium to long-term trend predictions. During the global market crash triggered by the pandemic in March 2020, Lee was one of the earliest strategists to predict a "V-shaped rebound," firmly advising investors to add positions during the dip. In May 2021, after Bitcoin dramatically corrected from its $60,000 high to the $30,000 range and briefly rebounded, Lee reaffirmed his view in a CNBC 'TechCheck' interview, originally proposed in December 2020, that Bitcoin would break $100,000 by year-end. He stated, "Bitcoin is inherently extremely volatile, but it is this volatility that brings return opportunities" and "Even now that Bitcoin is in the cold palace, I still believe it can break $100,000 by year-end." Additionally, as early as 2019, Lee had suggested on CNBC that ordinary investors allocate 1% to 2% of their assets to Bitcoin, with the host surprisingly responding, "That sounds kind of crazy," a segment that widely circulated and became representative of his stance on Bitcoin.
In December 2023, Lee projected in Fundstrat's annual outlook that the S&P 500 would rise to 5,200 points in 2024, when the index was still around 4,600. This target was achieved ahead of time in mid-2024. Subsequently, in a Bloomberg 'Odd Lots' podcast, he further stated that the S&P 500 could reach 15,000 points by 2030, benefiting from corporate earnings growth, valuation reassessment, and technological innovation. He reiterated that Bitcoin's long-term potential valuation could reach millions of dollars with continued wallet adoption.
In his career, Lee has also experienced critical misjudgments. In the 1990s, as a wireless communication industry analyst, he was optimistic about the sector's high growth, but the related sectors significantly declined after the network bubble burst. He also underestimated the systemic risks in the real estate market before the 2008 financial crisis, later candidly admitting this was one of his greatest lessons—that stock market trends are highly dependent on credit market confidence. In interviews, he stated, "Once the credit market loses confidence, no financial market can remain unscathed." These setbacks prompted him to place greater emphasis on cyclical indicators and capital flow structures, establishing his research style anchored in historical data.
Lee has long been active in mainstream financial programs such as CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNN, regularly serving as a special commentator and market strategy analysis guest on CNBC's 'Fast Money', 'TechCheck', 'Halftime Report', and 'Closing Bell'. He has gained investor attention for his commitment to independent views and multiple successful macro market trend predictions. During the significant U.S. stock market decline in 2022, Lee maintained a bullish stance and proposed in mid-year that the market had bottomed out, which was subsequently confirmed, earning him the reputation of a representative contrarian optimist in the "Wall of Worry".
Currently, Tom Lee also serves as an investment strategy advisor at NewEdge Wealth, continuing to publish cutting-edge perspectives at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets.
Strategic Layout: Controlling BitMine, Advancing Ethereum's Fiscal Model
In June 2025, Lee was appointed as the Chairman of the Board of BitMine Immersion Technologies (Nasdaq: BMNR), beginning to participate in the company's strategic transformation from traditional mining to enterprise-level ETH reserve structure. BitMine is a digital asset infrastructure enterprise headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, initially focusing on Bitcoin mining, using immersion cooling technology to enhance energy efficiency and computing power stability, dedicated to building high-performance, low-cost blockchain computing platforms.
In the same month of the appointment, the company completed a PIPE private placement, issuing 55,555,556 common shares and related securities, priced at $4.50 per share, raising $250 million, and subsequently submitted an S-3 ASR automatic registration statement, launching an ATM program of up to $2 billion, with Cantor Fitzgerald and ThinkEquity serving as sales agents, with funds to be used for building ETH fiscal reserves.
By mid-July, the company disclosed a total ETH holding of 300,657, with a market value exceeding $1 billion, including approximately 60,000 in-the-money options supported by $200 million in cash. Lee stated that the company is advancing towards the goal of "acquiring and pledging 5% of Ethereum's total supply".
Subsequently, Founders Fund revealed a 9.1% stake in BMNR, and ARK Invest purchased 4,773,444 BMNR shares through an over-the-counter agreement, with a transaction amount of approximately $182 million, and announced the conversion of all shares into ETH reserves to support the company's strategy.
In late July, BMNR initiated options trading, further enhancing the stock's liquidity. The latest disclosure shows that BitMine's ETH holdings have increased to 566,776, with a market value exceeding $2 billion, nearly 8 times the initial PIPE amount, becoming one of the global listed companies with the largest ETH holdings.
Lee: Stablecoins Driving Ethereum as the Institutional Preferred Choice
In a recent interview with Amit Kukreja and CoinDesk, Tom Lee expressed his firm belief in the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly the stablecoin and real-world assets (RWA) tokenization trend. He noted that the rise of stablecoins constitutes a "ChatGPT moment" in the crypto field, with the global stablecoin market value exceeding $250 billion, with over 50% of issuance and about 30% of gas fees occurring on the Ethereum network. As stablecoins gain support from the US Treasury and Wall Street, Ethereum is gradually becoming a key infrastructure connecting crypto and traditional finance.
As the Chairman of BitMine's Board, Lee pointed out that Ethereum fiscal listed companies have five structural advantages compared to ETF or on-chain custody models:
1. Ability to purchase ETH through share issuance when stock price is above net asset value, achieving reflexive elevation of net asset value (NAV) per share;
2. Ability to combine convertible bond issuance, option sales, and other tools to hedge volatility, reducing financing costs and achieving low-cost or even zero-cost positioning;
3. Capability to acquire other on-chain fiscal companies, further amplifying NAV leverage;
4. Ability to expand ETH staking, DeFi yields, on-chain infrastructure, and other businesses to build sustainable cash flow sources;
5. Once its ETH holdings occupy a core position in the on-chain ecosystem or become a key node in stablecoin payment and clearing networks, it may acquire a status similar to a "sovereign put", potentially becoming a strategic asset prioritized for acquisition by financial institutions.
Lee emphasized that as platforms like Robinhood launch stock tokenization services through Ethereum Layer 2, more institutions are embracing compliant, scalable blockchain platforms, with Ethereum currently being the only mainchain satisfying regulatory adaptability, ecosystem maturity, and scale effects.
In the CoinDesk interview, he concluded: "Stablecoins have completed a breakthrough in the crypto industry similar to ChatGPT. Wall Street is seeking a chain that can carry real-world assets while complying with regulations, and Ethereum is becoming that convergence point." Fundstrat analysts set ETH's short-term technical target at $4,000, believing its year-end fair value could reach $10,000 to $15,000. Lee stated: "Allocating ETH at current prices is an effective path for corporate finance to obtain 10x potential."
