BlockBeats news: On July 13, Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat and chairman of Bitmine, stated at the WebX 2026 conference that Ethereum is at a pivotal moment similar to where Amazon, NVIDIA, and JPMorgan Chase began their second phases of growth.
He believes Ethereum follows a similar development path. Since its inception, ETH has experienced the ICO boom and the NFT boom, reaching a historical high of $4,866; in 2025, it rebounded to $4,955, driven by the approval of spot ETFs and the rapid adoption of stablecoins. Today, the price has retreated to approximately $1,732, a phase Tom Lee defines as "market abandonment at the bottom range." Ethereum 2.0’s future growth will be built on four pillars: a new governance structure for the Ethereum Foundation; Agentic AI; a settlement layer for the financial system; and ETH becoming a true "currency."
Tom Lee stated that Wall Street institutions are continuously expanding their presence in the Ethereum ecosystem, and their ongoing development of Layer 2 networks signifies that the entire traditional financial system is gradually migrating toward the Ethereum ecosystem.
When Bitmine was founded, it planned to hold 5% of the global ETH supply over five years, but it has now achieved 95% of that goal in just 12 months. The company currently holds 5.74 million ETH, accounting for approximately 4.8% of the total ETH supply. Of this, about 4.87 million ETH (roughly 85%) have been staked.