Written by: Lin Wan Wan
No one originally thought that the "top spot" of Ethereum enterprise holdings would change hands in 35 days.
Led by Tom Lee, BitMine, a small company that was once obscure on Nasdaq, achieved this: through a PIPE financing and three rounds of structured position building, they pulled their ETH holdings from zero to 830,000, overtaking SharpLink to become the world's largest ETH treasury.
This is not just a numerical victory, but a battle between two different types of capital - SharpLink represents the "crypto OGs" who slowly accumulate coins and wait for price increases, while BitMine represents "Wall Street power" that realizes gains through price pushing. Low-cost and high-leverage approaches, hodling mentality versus Narrative strategy, represent a direct confrontation of two worldviews.
They differ not just in how they buy coins, but in who has the right to define ETH's "price" in the next stage of crypto finance.
We attempt to understand this quietly occurring but intense industry shift from multiple angles.
Why Two Blood Lines of ETH?
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the original structure and meaning while translating to English.]This "market expectation - structural disclosure - asset acquisition - price feedback" positive cycle is viewed by Wall Street as a typical market capitalization reshaping case. The difference is that it not only reshaped the company's valuation but also reshaped the market dominance of ETH treasury through a Narrative approach.
BitMine is no longer just a crypto holding enterprise; it is becoming the key hub of the "Ethereum institutionalization structure". In this process, it does not wait for market recognition but actively "creates" recognition through rhythm, disclosure, rhetoric, structure, and pricing models.
In one sentence: This is not a "waiting for rise" position building, but a "forcing rise" structure.
From nothing to something, from buying coins to pushing up valuation, from disclosure to pricing dominance, BitMine created a "structural rise" template in 35 days.
And it may be the earliest financial prototype in the next Ethereum bull market narrative.
Tom Lee: The New Dealer's Spokesperson
As the co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, Tom Lee is one of the most influential bridges between US stocks and the crypto market. He understands macro data, media manipulation, and more importantly, how to make "rising" sound both reasonable and appealing.
His fame comes not from accurate predictions, but from high-frequency, strong narrative, and strong positioning. The popular saying is: "Tom Lee may not be right, but he definitely speaks early, loudly, and memorably."
His most representative tool is the Bitcoin Misery Index (BMI) - a "market sentiment indicator" he designed himself, which quantifies the market's "pain index" by comprehensively analyzing trading volume, return rate, volatility, and other data.
The greatest significance of this index is not to predict rises and falls, but to provide "data endorsement" for his bullish statements. For example: When BMI is extremely low (<27), he says "this is the moment for long-term holders to buy the dips"; when BMI is extremely high (>80), he claims "this represents a structural bull market has arrived"; if the price drops, he says "sentiment has not been fully released"; if the price rises, he says "on-chain structure is being repaired".
No matter whether it rises or falls, he always has something to say; no matter the market condition, he can always shill bullishly.
Tom Lee image source: coingape
Tom Lee's "structured shilling" style has several notable characteristics.
Always providing a new target price. He once predicted in 2017 that Bitcoin "will surge to $250,000 in 2022", then revised in 2021 to "expected to reach $200,000 in 2024"; when market performance is poor, he cites halving cycles, inflation adjustments, Federal Reserve policies, etc., to "postpone" expectations while upgrading the logic.
Platform cross-promotion + frequent appearances. He is a regular guest on CNBC's 'Fast Money' and a fixed commentator for Bloomberg; his Twitter (@fundstrat) is almost daily updated, synchronized with YouTube interviews, using short video summaries and charts to spread views; he also regularly updates data summaries with charts on the Fundstrat website for media secondary citation.
Emotion drives investors, narrative drives institutions. Retail investors listen to him call the bottom; institutions listen to him explain the structure. He can create psychological expectations suitable for different groups within the same model, forming a "multi-layer Narrative embedding". For example, he repeatedly emphasized the "institutional buying window" during price crashes while urging retail investors "not to miss the boarding opportunity before halving".
From prediction to belief creator. He doesn't just say "it will rise", he tells you "the rise structure is reasonable", "ETH will become a new anchor for tech stocks", "BTC is the new digital gold". He transforms result-oriented bullish calls into belief-oriented asset revaluation.
In the 2024-2025 Ethereum Narrative construction, Tom Lee once again becomes an important driving force. He doesn't just say ETH will rise, but says "ETH will become part of corporate balance sheets", a view that directly provides media escort for Narrative-type operations like BitMine.
In BitMine's rise, we can almost see the deep shadow of Tom Lee's rhetorical logic: using "structural indicators" like ETH-per-share to measure fundamentals; using "cycle logic" to explain the rationality of rapid rise; using "institutional entry" to mask the aggressive strategy behind high-cost buying.
Tom Lee is absolutely the Narrative King, not by being right, but by being loud.
Epilogue
In traditional financial markets, asset prices are determined by profitability and cash flow; but in today's crypto asset world, price often exists before value, and narrative often dominates valuation generation.
BitMine's rise is not just a change in an ETH number on the enterprise asset-liability sheet, but a Narrative reconstruction around "how to make institutions understand ETH". SharpLink guards the old logic, slowly accumulating coins on-chain; BitMine steps to the beat of structure and emotion, quickly completing a "consensus handover".
This is not about who is more honest, but about who can more quickly, clearly, and structurally explain "crypto assets" as "financial assets".
Behind this, an even larger Narrative race is quietly brewing: Who will be the long-term valuation anchor for ETH on Wall Street? Who will build the next mainstream "ETH-per-share" model? Who can turn liquidity narrative into structural income? Who will ultimately become the next dominant voice in institutional pricing?
The market will provide the answer. But one thing is certain: this Ethereum treasury battle is no longer just a relay of on-chain faith.
The ceiling of Ethereum pricing no longer belongs to the earliest bullish OGs, but to Wall Street capital that tells the best stories.
