[
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "We're going to continue the conversation on agentic AI and crypto coming out of age. So, please welcome to the stage our next speaker, Tom Lee, chairman at Bitmain."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> [music] >> Hi, good good afternoon, everybody. I've got a presentation that's getting pulled up now."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And in the next 20 minutes I'm going to cover a few things, but the main takeaway to me is that I think the crypto winter is over."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And now is the time to think about the next cycle. I think there are many things driving this next cycle."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh and I think Ethereum's going to be one of the main characters of that up cycle."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Okay. So, first, let's start with the conversation about uh this crypto winter."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And I think, you know, it's been uh you know, painful, a bear market since October."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But, something that is unusual is that this is the first crypto winter that's happened without a stock market bear market. So, let me explain."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Ethereum is down 65% since October. Uh obviously, a painful decline."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And I want to highlight declines of equal size or greater since 2018. And there are four of them, as you can see on this chart, including one last year in 2025."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But, here's the thing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "In 2016, that 72% decline in Ethereum happened when the equity markets fell 20% and we had an industrial recession."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Um in 2019, 2018 through 2019, that's when Fed chair Powell was raising rates at a time when the market couldn't support higher interest rates and we had a 20% equity bear market."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Of course, we know 2022 was the time the Fed uh was fighting inflation uh and the economy had a heart attack and so that decline in crypto was within equity bear market. And last year,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "in 2025 was the tariff wars that caused a 20% decline in the stock market. So every one of these crypto bear markets that we've gone through, these crypto winters, have occurred when the equity"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "markets were down at least 20%."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But not this time."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Instead, we've had a a decline caused, I think, by two things."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Maybe the cycle is is one of the original things, but on October 10th was a a crypto deleveraging event that triggered the first sell-off."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And then this year, we had another leg down in stocks because of the Iran war build-up."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And maybe it's possibly explained by the SaaS apocalypse um in AI stocks cuz as you can see here, Bitcoin and software stocks are highly correlated."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But why am I saying this? Well, because I don't think we have a crypto winter. I think it's a mini crypto winter."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And the key now is is the has the stock market bottomed? So let me spend a couple of minutes explain to you why I think the equity market has bottomed."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "First, uh you should care because every bit Bitcoin top has coincided with an equity top and every equity market bottom has coincided with a Bitcoin bottom. So, we do care about what the S&P is doing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And we are in a wartime situation."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "I think many of you may be bearish. Um in my other hat at Fundstrat, we're actually bullish right now on stocks. In fact, uh we called the bottom for equities more than a week ago."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "We think the bottom has already been put in place for equities."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And the reason is stocks don't rise on they don't bottom on good news. Equity markets bottom on bad news."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And we've had a lot of bad news, okay?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And keep in mind if you're skeptical and you don't think equities have bottomed, look back at the last few years."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "The COVID lows in March, people were bearish, but equities had bottomed. And again, at Fundstrat, we did call that low."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "In Novem- November 2022 at the market lows, we were lambasted for turning bullish and staying bullish, but that was the lows and people were bearish for the next 18 months even as stocks went up."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And last year at the April lows, again at Fundstrat, >> [clears throat] >> we called the lows actually to the day."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And investors were very bearish at those lows."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Okay. So, why do we think the stock market's bottomed?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "One, uh that's what history shows. If you look at every major conflict, the stock market basically sells off into the build-up and it bottoms when the invasion starts."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "In fact, let's look at World War II. In World War II, okay, that was a 4-year war."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "The The US entered the war in December 1941 and the stock market bottomed 5 months into the war."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "To understand what that means, you should look at this chart."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Okay, you can see the chart. Um the stock market bottomed in May 1942."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "That was 1 month before the Battle of Midway, which is the Pacific War."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, before the US even engaged in its first battle in World War II, the equity markets bottomed."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And then you can see D-Day in Europe, June 1944, the stock market had already recovered."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But it actually rallied the day of the invasion."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Now, why is that? It's because during the war the US economy gets stimulated."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "The average war spends $32 billion a month."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And the last two wars cost about a trillion dollars, but that was a trillion dollars of earnings growth."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And President Trump is asking for roughly $700 billion additional spending for this war."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, you might say, \"Well, Tom, I'm not convinced cuz look at what happened to oil.\" Well, oil surged from 68 to 120."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But notice it's actually declined to under $100 now."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "In fact, uh if you look at the oil future prices, uh they barely budged."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And the VIX, which is a measure of volatility, soared to 30 and is now below 20."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Why does that matter?"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Well, we looked at three conditions."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "When is the VIX closed above 30, oil's pulled back 20%, and the VIX closed below 20. It's happened four times."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Four of four times it was a major low."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And actually the average 6-month gain is almost 10%. So, I think it's definitive in our minds that the equity markets have bottomed."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But I think this is an important equity low because uh if we clear this Middle East problem and the US economy holds up through higher oil, uh I think we're going to look at a bull"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "market that could run through 2028. So, a major major move in equities."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Okay."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, that's the setup, and that's why I think Ethereum is probably on its way to 60,000 if we're correct."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And here's something to keep in mind."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "One, since the war started, the best-performing asset in the world, outperforming energy stocks, is Ethereum."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Um it's out performed the S&P by almost 20 percentage points. And you can see it's massively outperformed gold and silver."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And if you take a look at Ethereum's chart over the last 10 years, I think it's going through a major consolidation, a massive consolidation. And uh how do these other consolidations get"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "resolved? Well, in the first consolidation, Ethereum went on to rise by 220 times."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And then the consolidation that ended in 2019, Ethereum rose by 50x."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, I think there is a massive move coming in Ethereum driven by a couple of things. One is tokenization, and the second is agentic AI."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, uh I'm going to have to go through these pretty quickly, but I think that this means you can get something like a 25x for Ethereum. So, I've talked a lot about tokenization in the past, so I'm going to fly through"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "this."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh you can look at our other presentations about this, but I think we're going through a an important moment in the financial system not too different than 1971, which is that tokenization is a time when we're making"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "almost every asset synthetic."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And it follows a roadmap that happened when the US went off the gold standard in '71. It led to unleashing a huge innovation of products from money market funds to currency futures"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "to CDOs, to index futures, all because the US was trying to preserve the sovereignty of the dollar when we went off the gold standard."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Well, I think that's happening today because now we're we're digitizing everything."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And look, even Jamie Dimon, the biggest skeptic on blockchain, even recently stated that crypto is better than the current financial system."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, what does that mean? Well, I think everyone who's building in crypto is going to develop these future products, and that's stable coins, tokenized equities, you know, tokenized monetary reputation,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "but it's also really part of the future agentic system."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh part of this is the Clarity Act, which we hope passes, uh has a 59% chance of passing."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But if it doesn't, I think crypto is actually going to do well without without the Clarity Act, because that just means that companies are going to be building, engineers going to be developing"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "products that are relevant without the banking system."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "The second driver, and sorry, I'm going to fly through this quick cuz I only have 6 minutes, is agentic AI."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Now, I've put together a list of all the things that work better an AI system using blockchain. Uh but let me just cover a few of these really quickly. One is, of course, identity,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "decentralized identity."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "The second is the unit of payment and the payment system. I don't think AI systems care that they're using dollars to collect payments, but they almost certainly don't want to be using"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "PayPal or Visa or MasterCard to do micro payments, um because they want to use smaller units of accounts, and that's where crypto comes into play."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And what all this means in our view is that blockchains should gain relevance against crypto's store value, which is Bitcoin. And so in our minds, the way to think about the future of"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Ethereum is its price ratio to Bitcoin."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Now, the 8-year average is 0.0479."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "The high was 0.087."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And what does that mean for the price of Ethereum? Well, we think fair value for Bitcoin is 250,000."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And so if Ethereum goes back to the 8-year average, that's 12,000."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "If Ethereum goes back to its 2021 high of the price ratio, that's 22,000 Ethereum. Of course, I think it's better positioned today than it was in 2021."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And so that gets us to what we think is the payment rails number, that Ethereum is going to be roughly a quarter of the value of Ethereum of Bitcoin."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And that gets you to 62,000."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And that's kind of following uh his the previous historical price cycles, that if you look at the last crypto lows and make a composite of where Ethereum could be in roughly 3 years, that would be a 30x,"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "and that would take us to around 60,000."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And that gets us to Bitmain. Cuz Bitmain is an Ethereum treasury. We're very leveraged the future of Ethereum, so I'm bullish on Ethereum, which is why Bitmain is spending so much of its"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "capital acquiring Ethereum."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But we've been in a crypto winter."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And in this crypto winter, we've been doing a lot of things to prepare for the next cycle."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "For instance, we put a hundred million dollars into Aiko, which own is the largest one of the largest holders of Worldcoin."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "We launched Maven, which is a a staking operation. In fact, it's the largest staking single staking operation now in the world with more than 14 billion of crypto staked."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh later today, Maven is is having a meetup at the stage around 5:30 outside of here."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "We put $200 million into Beast Industries, which is Mr. Beast. He's the largest content creator in the world."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh we uplisted to the NYC Big Board, which is a this is the exchange where institutions can easily start to buy our stock."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And we also bought 4% of the Ethereum coin supply."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "So, you can see when we started Bitmain, we wanted to reach 5% of Ethereum supply. We launched Bitmain on June 30th."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And you can see 10 months later, we've hit the 4% milestone, much quicker than we expected."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Our our first 1% came in August. Our number two came in September."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Our 3% share came in November, and you can see we just crossed the 4% barrier."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And we think we'll get to 5% sometime this year."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And we've uplisted to the Big Board NYC."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "It's much easier for institutions to buy our stock."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And we launched Maven. Uh it is the largest single single service staking operator in the world. We we're going to have about 14 billion of crypto once Bitmain's crypto is staked."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh we are actually staking about $2 billion of other people's crypto right now, including Ethereum, some Hyperliquid and Solana."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh it's going to generate a lot of yield for us. We estimate that when we're at when we fully stake our current ethereum holdings, it's about $310 million worth of ETH a year. It's about a million a day."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And once we get to 5% it's going to be around 384 million."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "We also have an investment in 8 co."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh the ticker is Orbs. If you're not familiar, it's about a $300 million company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "But it mainly owns private stakes stakes in private companies and in Worldcoin."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "In fact, >> [clears throat] >> 8 co has about 30% of its holdings in Open AI."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh and that's an authorized position. Uh over 22% of its assets in Worldcoin."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And then 8% into Mr. Beast, ethereum and cash."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Here's the thing. If you look at something like VCX, which is a closed-end fund that owns private stakes in valuable software companies, it trades at about six times net asset value."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh 8 co is closer to one time. So, we think our investment in Orbs is is mass is going to be a massive home run."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh Worldcoin, if you're not too familiar with it, it's a project that was co-founded by Sam Altman that works on human identity."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "That's of course super relevant in this world of AI. Uh in fact, Reddit is in talks of using Worldcoin potentially to make sure that the the people who post on Reddit are not bots."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Mr. Beast is very famous. He's the largest content creator in the world. Uh and he started a bank."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh we think he's going to be the Robinhood and Chime of the Gen Z Gen Alpha."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And uh our stock is tracking ethereum. It frustrates people when ETH goes down, but keep in mind we're outperforming ethereum. Last year, we started Bitmain on June 30th. You can see Bitmain rose"
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "500% Ethereum was only up 22% in that time, so we outperformed last year by 48,000 basis points."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh this year, Ethereum is down 18%, our stock's down 15, so we're outperforming by 310 basis points."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "And the reason for that, of course, is that we're using capital markets to grow your holdings of ETH."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "If Ethereum gets to 22,000, our stock price is 500, which is a lot of upside."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Um at 62,000 ETH, which is we what we think fair value is in a few years, our stock is 1,500. So, I'm going to end that there. Thank you very much, and I'll speak to you soon."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> [applause] >> Welcome to Signal Wave."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> [applause] [music]"
  }
]