Morning Minute: Tom Lee Races to 1,000,000+ ETH

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors mixed ahead of CPI; ETH leads +2% to $4,280
• ETH ETFs post first $1B day; Tom Lee acquires 1.2M ETH
• Stripe is working on its own L1 blockchain ‘Tempo’
• Circle reported strong revenue growth in Q2, stock pops; shares new L1 ‘Arc’
• Monero faces 51% attack from Qubic

🏦 Tom Lee’s BMNR Grabs 1M ETH

Tom Lee has been buying ETH at a mind-boggling pace.

And he has to, because he has competition nipping at his heels.

📌 What Happened

Tom Lee’s BitMine just became the world’s largest corporate ETH holder, crossing 1.15M ETH (~$5B) in ETH treasury after adding 317,000+ ETH in just one week.

Five billion dollars worth of ETH is about 1% of ETH’s circulating supply, purchased in less than 2 months.

That pales in comparison to his target of 5% (~$25B at current prices), so it looks like he’s going to keep buying.

Which is what his BMNR shareholders are betting on, with BMNR popping 25% on Friday and then another 15% on Monday (was up 30% at one point).

BMNR stock jumped 15% Monday on the news

But the thing is – Tom Lee can’t stop buying if he wants to be the top ETH holder.

Because Joe Lubin’s SharpLink (SBET) has been stacking its own ETH trove, expected to disclose 600,000 ETH ($2.5B) in holdings today after a major buying spree.

And they’ve got plenty of ammo themselves, after raising another $900M in the past week.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“The crazy mf actually did it. Tom Lee is the first to 1m ETH. New buys revealed show 1.2m ETH ($5 billion). In one month he’s made it 20% of the way to his goal to acquire 5% of all ETH supply. 12x faster than Saylor. We are past the moon headed toward the andromeda galaxy.” – Ryan Adams, Bankless

“Just because digital asset treasuries have gone up and you don’t own it doesn’t mean it’s a bubble… A bubble is just your friend making money.” – Tom Lee

🧠 Why It Matters

This is Ethereum’s MicroStrategy moment, but with two deep-pocketed players instead of one.

And they are accumulating at a much faster pace than Saylor did, as they are literally racing each other to acquire as much ETH as possible at current prices.

That has such a massive impact on the market (already seen).

Each purchase is taking ETH off the market, tightening supply while adding credibility to ETH as a corporate reserve asset.

It’s not just the buy pressure that’s driving ETH up – it’s the “talking heads” and narratives being formed.

Tom Lee (and Joe Lubin) are going on CNBC and talking the ETH thesis.

Now Wall St is catching on, and talking about how the staking yield, DeFi and composability give it a cash-flow edge over Bitcoin, making it more appealing.

We’ve seen that impact in the ETF inflows, with ETH greatly outperforming BTC in ETF inflows over the past 3 weeks.

It’s the best setup ETH has arguably ever had.



Now it’s time for new ATHs…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors were mixed with ETH leading ahead of CPI today; BTC -2% at $118,600, ETH +2% at $4,280, XRP -2% at $3.15, SOL -2% at $175
• LDO (+3%) and PENDLE (+1%) led top movers in a slow day
• The ETH ETFs saw $1.02B in net inflows on Monday, a smashing new record ($178.1M for BTC)
• Stripe is building an L1 blockchain ‘Tempo’ with backing from Paradigm, described as “a high-performance, payments-focused blockchain”
• Circle is building its own L1 blockchain ‘Arc’ to facilitate stablecoins & support capital markets apps; CRCL +13% after sharing strong revenue & USDC growth
• Monero is under a 51% attack from the Qubic mining pool group, apparently aiming to make themselves the only mining entity on Monero
• Paxos applied for a national trust charter with the OCC to expand its operations nationwide, following Circle and Ripple
• Do Kwon is expected to plead guilty to charges related to Terra’s collapse in 2022

Circle had strong revenue growth in Q2 along with its new L1 blockchain announcement

In Corporate Treasuries

• BMNR jumped 15% after Tom Lee disclosed 1.15M ETH in holdings ($5B)
• ETHZilla (ATNF) pumped 50% after Peter Thiel disclosed a 7.5% stake in the ETH TreasuryCo; they also closed on $156M of convertible notes following last week’s $425M PIPE
• ALT5 announced a $1.5B offering to build a WLFI Treasury, and that Zach Witkoff and Eric Trump will join the Board of Directors
• Heritage Distillery (CASK) announced $360M in financing to build an IP treasury
• Safety Shot announced a $25M raise to build a BONK treasury
• BTCS added 3 Pudgy Penguins to its ETH Corporate Treasury, the first TreasuryCo to do so

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are mostly red on the day; DOGE -5%, Shiba -4%, PEPE -6%, PENGU -11%, BONK -11%, TRUMP -4%, SPX -7%, and FARTCOIN -16%
• SWIF was the biggest SOL mover, up 75% to $29M; REX ran 6,500% to $5M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• Hyperliquid is now averaging $3.3M in profit per day
• Plasma partnered with Pendle to make yield available to everyone, everywhere
• Moonbirds announced a a Kaito rewards program to reward yappers

🤖 AI x Crypto

Section dedicated to headlines in the AI sector of crypto:

• Overall market cap down 5% to $12.3B, leaders were mostly red
• FARTCOIN (-15%), VIRTUAL (-8%), TIBBIR (-7%), ai16z (-10%) & ALCH (-2%)
• REALIS (+20%), DARK (+20%) and Bios (+13%) led top movers

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH NFT leaders were mostly even; Punks even at 55 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 14.8, BAYC even at 13.2 ETH
• Moonbirds (+19%) and Mythics (+22%) were notable top movers
• Abstract NFTs were mostly green, led by Bearish (+15%)
• Gondi shared a new record TVL of $120M with $60M in active NFT loans

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