Author: Zen, PANews

On October 1st, at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Tom Lee, co-founder and CIO of Fundstrat, chairman of BitMine, and Wall Street strategist, took the stage at OKX and delivered a keynote speech entitled "The Biggest Macro Shift on Wall Street Since the Gold Standard."

In recent months, he has once again been at the forefront of public opinion with a series of radical predictions: Bitcoin is expected to hit the $200,000 range driven by the loose cycle and the seasonality of the fourth quarter, while Ethereum's year-end target is directly aimed at $10,000-15,000, making him "Ethereum's first 'man of the crowd'."

In this speech, he tried to use a narrative extending from 1971 to 2025 to explain why Wall Street, AI and blockchain will converge into a "new inflection point."

A new turning point in Wall Street narrative: 2025 may be the next structural moment

Lee opened his presentation with a "level set." He explained that he and his team began systematically researching crypto assets nine years ago, when Bitcoin was around $963. Nine years later, Bitcoin has evolved as an asset class, with cumulative returns exceeding 100-fold. Over the same period, Nvidia's return has increased approximately 65-fold, and gold has roughly tripled—and in his view, Ethereum's long-term growth has even surpassed Bitcoin's.

From this "relative yield curve," he quickly zooms back to 1971: Nixon's announcement that the dollar's convertibility into gold ended, effectively ending the gold standard. The real opportunity after that wasn't simply "going long on gold," but rather the wave of financial engineering unleashed by Wall Street to maintain the dollar's dominance. This wave of financial engineering—money market funds, futures, debit cards, currency and interest rate swaps, index futures, zero-coupon bonds, and more—created a whole suite of tools, expanding and strengthening the financial industry. Today, a significant portion of the world's top 30 companies by market capitalization are financial institutions.

Lee used this to put forward his core judgment: a structural moment similar to that of 1971 will occur again in 2025.

The key variables in his "New 1971 Path" are "Wall Street x AI x Blockchain." He believes that the US regulatory and legislative foundations have already been laid, including the GENIUS Act, which lays the framework for stablecoins, the SEC's "Project Crypto," and the "Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Act."

They all point to the same goal: using financial engineering to "synthesize" desired returns, then transforming real assets into tokens that can be circulated on the blockchain. In this regard, Bitcoin remains the "OG" digital store of value, but from the "other side of the ledger," Wall Street will become deeply involved and create a massive market for digital assets, with Ethereum being the biggest beneficiary.

Compared with gold, Bitcoin's market value still has a lot of room to rise

Regarding asset pricing, he first offered a reference framework for Bitcoin: if gold reaches $4,000 (or even $5,000) per ounce, and if Bitcoin's network value is calculated at just 10% of gold's, the target price for Bitcoin would be approximately $140,000. However, he believes this ratio is too low. If it were to match or even surpass gold, the corresponding price would be between $1.4 million and $2.2 million per coin. Based on this, he remains bullish on Bitcoin, currently trading at approximately $110,000.

However, the main theme he focused on was "how tokenization, starting with stablecoins, will encompass all measurable elements in the economy." His list includes stablecoins as the starting point for the "tokenized dollar," which will then extend to stocks, credit, real estate, reputation, and intellectual property. More "invisible" metrics will also be brought on-chain and monetized, including data collection, royalty distribution, membership and loyalty, agent AI, and "Proof of Humanity."

Why does the US government care about stablecoins? Lee's answer echoes the "battle to preserve the dollar" after 1971: the US dollar accounts for about 27% of global GDP, but 57% of central bank foreign exchange reserves and a whopping 88% of financial market transactions, while stablecoins are almost 100% denominated in US dollars.

Today, the circulating supply of stablecoins is approximately $280 billion, and some in the Treasury believe this could reach $4 trillion. If the stablecoin ecosystem collectively holds over $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, it could become the world's largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds. Meanwhile, businesses that restructure their operations on-chain will benefit from improved settlement and process efficiency, which is a key business driver for tokenization.

He then used a comparison of the profitability of protogenesis companies to reinforce the feasibility of "remaking Wall Street on the blockchain." Taking the stablecoin issuer Tether as an example, he said its financing valuation reached $500 billion and it had approximately 150 employees, which translated into a "per capita market value" far exceeding that of traditional major banks. Meanwhile, although JPMorgan Chase has a market value of $869 billion and 317,000 employees, its "per employee market value" is significantly lower than the former.

Lee concluded from this that native companies built on public chains demonstrate strong capital efficiency and profit elasticity.

The biggest beneficiary of the transition: Ethereum’s institutional preference

Back to his identified "biggest winner": Ethereum. Lee's logic is that Wall Street wants to build its businesses on a "neutral public chain," and in reality, more and more institutions are choosing Ethereum. He stated that Ethereum's current TVL accounts for approximately 68%, and that TVL has acted as a "floor" to support Ethereum's valuation over the past few cycles. He also mentioned that SWIFT recently announced that it will conduct a migration trial on Ethereum's second layer.

Regarding price structure, he sees Ethereum as undergoing an extended period of consolidation since 2018: reaching a peak in 2021, followed by four years of sideways fluctuations, and now attempting an upward breakout. In terms of relative price, the ETH/BTC ratio is currently around 0.036, with a long-term average of approximately 0.047 and a 2021 high of 0.087. "2025 is Ethereum's '1971 moment,'" he said, adding that a return to at least 0.087 is not unrealistic.

In scenario calculations, he used the above ratio to incorporate the assumption of "Bitcoin at $250,000 by the end of the year": if it returns to the long-term average of 0.0479, Ethereum will be around $12,030; if it returns to the 2021 high of 0.087, it will be around $22,000; if Ethereum becomes the main payment/settlement rail in the future and its network value is comparable to that of Bitcoin, it will correspond to about $62,000.

"This is not the ceiling yet," he added, "overall we are more optimistic about Ethereum."

To implement his investment argument for "going long on Ethereum," Lee turned to the capital market strategy of "digital asset treasury companies": taking MicroStrategy as an example, since launching the "issuance of shares to increase Bitcoin holdings" five years ago, the price of Bitcoin has increased by about 10 times (from about 11,000 to about 108,000), while MSTR's stock price has increased by about 25 times, significantly outperforming the underlying assets.

In the multi-chain landscape, Solana and others still have a big stage

Following this line of thought, he detailed the practices of BitMine (also referred to as Bitline in his presentation), of which he serves as chairman: It claims to be the world's second-largest treasury company holding Ethereum, raising funds faster than MSTR and boasting ample liquidity. Over the past nine weeks, its "ETH held per share" has increased approximately tenfold. He envisions such treasury companies not simply acquiring Ethereum but also becoming crypto infrastructure companies: providing network security services and generating returns through staking, while also promoting cross-border integration between Wall Street and crypto through ecosystem investment.

During the live Q&A session, the first questioner asked, "Will only one chain survive? Do projects like Solana still have a chance?" Lee responded that there's no need to be trapped in a single-chain situation. Real-world infrastructure and market organization are naturally diverse, and so are blockchains.

Considering the global GDP of $80 trillion, roughly half of it consists of financial transactions. If we add in elements like royalties and move them to blockchain, on-chain economic activity could easily expand to $100 trillion. If all of this were placed on Ethereum, "the price of Ethereum would reach incredible heights." Clearly, the market will leave ample room for specialized layer-one networks, and platforms like Solana still have a significant market opportunity. "Don't get too tribal," he emphasized. "The pie is big enough."

How do DATs navigate a bear market?

The second question focused on "How can digital asset treasury companies survive a bear market?" Lee offered two principles: first, maintain a clean balance sheet, avoid debt and complex capital structures, and maintain ample cash flow to cushion the downturn; second, continuously increase 'ETH per share held.'

Even if a cold winter arrives 12 months from now, as long as the company continues to accumulate intrinsic value per share during this period, even if the stock price retreats 50% in a bear market, it will not necessarily be lower than today. He believes that this approach of "continuously increasing holdings of core assets based on equity capital" is the fundamental means of combating cycles.

Lee concluded by translating the timeline back to the metaphor he used at the beginning: 2025 will be like the new 1971. Bitcoin will play the role of reserve and value anchor, while Ethereum will become the home of innovation and tokenization; Wall Street will "reinvent finance" on a public blockchain.

This is both his macro-level judgment and the betting direction given by him as the "first 'multi-vocal' supporter of Ethereum."