The Las Vegas company BitMine Immersion Technologies, listed on the Nasdaq and led by Tom Lee from Fundstrat, announced the acquisition of 153,000 ethers for $655 million.
The company currently holds 1.86 million ETH worth $8.1 billion. This is 1.5% of the 120.7 million ethers in circulation, making BitMine one of the largest holders of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The company's plans include acquiring up to 5% of the total ether supply.
Co-founder of Fundstrat Tom Lee, who serves as chairman of the board of BitMine, stated that Ethereum is 'living through 1971.' At that time, U.S. authorities abandoned the gold standard in favor of a 'synthetic dollar,' after which innovations in the financial sector began to rapidly develop: money market funds and debit cards emerged.
According to Lee's forecast, the next decade will be remembered for the adoption of stablecoins and tokenized stocks, facilitated by the passage of the Genius Law in the USA regulating the issuance and circulation of stablecoins. There are good prospects for artificial intelligence (AI), which could develop in the blockchain space, Lee suggested. Recently, the head of Fundstrat made an optimistic forecast for Ethereum — Lee believes that by the end of the year, ETH will trade in the range of $12,000-$15,000.
Due to the more favorable U.S. policy towards stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies, more and more large companies are buying Ethereum by selling corporate bonds. Recently, the Hong Kong firm Yunfeng Financial Group, co-owned by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, purchased 10,000 ETH for $44 million.
