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Thomas Jong Lee, commonly known as Tom Lee, is a well-known stock market strategist, research director, and financial commentator in the United States.

He was born in Westland, Michigan, USA, and is the third child of a Korean immigrant family. His father is a psychiatrist, and his mother transitioned from a homemaker to a Subway franchise owner. Lee then entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in finance and accounting. According to a January 2021 report by The Wall Street Journal, Lee often cooks to relax after a busy day, especially enjoying recreating Korean dishes his mother used to make. He is low-key and scholarly in style, rarely responding to critics but instead trying to respond with data. In an interview, he stated, "I cannot refute critics. I don't know what will happen. The stock market doesn't care about my opinion, so I can only try to understand what the market is saying."

Lee's Wall Street career began in the 1990s, where he worked at Kidder Peabody and Salomon Smith Barney. He joined JPMorgan in 1999 and served as the bank's chief stock strategist from 2007 until he left in 2014. During his tenure, he gained media attention for his optimistic market views and also became involved in industry controversies due to his insistence on critical research.

In 2002, as a telecommunications analyst at JPMorgan, Lee published a report on wireless operator Nextel, questioning whether its customer attrition rate and bad debt provisions accurately reflected actual conditions. On the day the report was released, Nextel's stock price briefly dropped 8%, followed by strong backlash from company executives. The CFO and general counsel called JPMorgan's research head and legal department, accusing Lee of using misleading assumptions and even suspecting that parts of the report had been leaked to specific investors before it was officially released. JPMorgan subsequently conducted a two-week internal investigation reviewing emails and call records, ultimately confirming that Lee had no misconduct. The Wall Street Journal reported the incident under the title "Unhappy Firm Bites Back," sparking widespread discussions about the independence of Wall Street analysts. This incident became a representative conflict in Lee's career and established his research style of data-driven analysis, resisting market and investment bank client pressures.

In 2014, Lee co-founded the independent research firm Fundstrat Global Advisors and served as its research director, successfully transitioning from a traditional investment bank strategist to a leader of an independent research institution. He was one of the first Wall Street strategists to incorporate Bitcoin into the mainstream valuation framework. In 2017, Lee published a report titled "A framework for valuing bitcoin as a substitute for gold," which first proposed the potential of Bitcoin to partially replace gold as a store of value. This framework was built upon three key parameters: the annual average growth rate of the U.S. base money supply (approximately 6.5%), the multiple of the value of alternative assets such as gold relative to the total money supply (set at approximately 400% in the model), and the potential market share of Bitcoin in this alternative value system (the model benchmark is 5%). According to this valuation model, the theoretical value center of Bitcoin in 2022 was $20,300, with sensitivity analysis showing a valuation range between $12,000 and $55,000. Lee pointed out in the report that as the total market capitalization of crypto assets exceeded $500 billion, central banks and institutional investors may consider including them in foreign exchange reserves and asset allocation considerations.

The same year, Lee introduced his short-term valuation model on the Business Insider program, based on Metcalfe's Law (which states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users). By using the number of independent Bitcoin addresses as a proxy for users and regressing the daily transaction volume per user, the model could explain about 94% of Bitcoin price movements since 2013.

Lee's research style emphasizes data-driven approaches and historical analogies, particularly excelling in long-term trend forecasting. In March 2020, during the global market crash triggered by the pandemic, Lee was one of the earliest strategists to predict a "V-shaped rebound" and strongly advised investors to add positions at lower prices. In May 2021, after Bitcoin fell from a high of $60,000 to a range of $30,000 and briefly rebounded, Lee appeared on CNBC's TechCheck program and reiterated his view first proposed in December 2020 that Bitcoin would surpass $100,000 by year-end. He stated, "Bitcoin is extremely volatile by nature, but it is precisely this volatility that brings return opportunities," and "even if Bitcoin is currently put aside, I still believe it will surpass $100,000 by year-end." Additionally, as early as 2019, Lee had suggested ordinary investors allocate 1% to 2% of their assets to Bitcoin on a CNBC program. The host responded with surprise, saying, "That sounds kind of crazy," and the clip later spread widely, becoming a representative moment of his steadfast position on Bitcoin.

In December 2023, Lee proposed in Fundstrat's annual outlook that the S&P 500 would reach 5,200 points in 2024, when the index was still around 4,600; this target was achieved ahead of schedule in mid-2024. Subsequently, in a Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast, he further stated that benefiting from corporate earnings growth, valuation reevaluation, and technological innovation, the S&P 500 could reach 15,000 points by 2030, and reiterated that Bitcoin's long-term potential valuation could reach millions of dollars under continued wallet adoption growth.

Throughout his career, Lee has also experienced significant judgment errors. In the 1990s, as a wireless communication industry analyst, he once anticipated rapid growth in the sector, but the related sectors plummeted after the dot-com bubble burst. He also underestimated the systemic risks in the real estate market before the 2008 financial crisis and later admitted that this was one of the biggest lessons he learned—that stock market movements are highly dependent on confidence in the credit market. In an interview, he stated, "Once the credit market loses confidence, no financial market can remain unaffected." These setbacks prompted him to pay more attention to cyclical indicators and capital flow structures later, establishing his research style anchored in historical data.

Lee has long been active on mainstream financial programs such as CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and CNN, serving as a regular commentator and market strategy analyst on programs like CNBC's Fast Money, TechCheck, Halftime Report, and Closing Bell. He has attracted investor attention for his commitment to independent viewpoints and multiple successful predictions of macroeconomic market trends. During the significant decline in the U.S. stock market in 2022, Lee maintained his bullish stance and proposed in mid-year that the market had reached a bottom, which was later confirmed by subsequent developments. Therefore, he is regarded as a representative of the contrarian optimistic faction in the "Wall of Worry."

Currently, Tom Lee also serves as an investment strategy advisor at NewEdge Wealth, continuing to express forward-looking perspectives in the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets.

Strategic Deployment: Leading BitMine, Advancing Ethereum Fiscal Model

In June 2025, Lee was appointed chairman of the board of BitMine Immersion Technologies (Nasdaq: BMNR), beginning his involvement in the company's strategic shift from traditional mining to enterprise-level Ethereum (ETH) reserve structure. BitMine is a digital asset infrastructure company headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, initially focused on Bitcoin mining, utilizing immersion cooling technology to enhance energy efficiency and computing power stability, aiming to build a high-performance, low-cost blockchain computing platform.

During the month of appointment, the company completed a PIPE private placement, issuing 55,555,556 shares of common stock and related securities, priced at $4.50 per share, raising a total amount of $250 million, and subsequently submitted an S-3 ASR automatic registration statement, initiating an ATM (At-the-Market) program of up to $2 billion, with Cantor Fitzgerald and ThinkEquity acting as sales agents, with funds used to build ETH fiscal reserves.

As of mid-July, the company disclosed that its total ETH holdings reached 300,657, with a market value exceeding $1 billion, including approximately 60,000 in-the-money options backed by $200 million in cash. Lee stated that the company is advancing toward the goal of "acquiring and staking 5% of Ethereum's total supply."

Subsequently, Founders Fund disclosed holding 9.1% equity in BMNR, and ARK Invest also purchased 4,773,444 shares of BMNR stock through over-the-counter agreements, with a transaction value of approximately $182 million, and announced that it would convert all of them into ETH reserves to support the company's strategy.

In late July, BMNR launched option trading, further increasing stock liquidity. The latest disclosure shows that BitMine's ETH holdings increased to 566,776, with a market value exceeding $2 billion, nearly eight times the initial PIPE amount, making it one of the largest publicly listed companies holding ETH in the world.

Lee: Stablecoins Drive Ethereum to Become the Preferred Choice for Institutions

In a recent interview with Amit Kukreja and CoinDesk, Tom Lee expressed his firm confidence in the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly emphasizing the push from stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). He pointed out that the rise of stablecoins constitutes a "ChatGPT moment" in the crypto space, with the global stablecoin market cap exceeding $250 billion, of which over 50% of issuance and approximately 30% of gas fees occur on the Ethereum network. As stablecoins gain support from the U.S. Treasury and Wall Street, Ethereum is gradually becoming the key infrastructure connecting crypto and traditional finance.

As chairman of the BitMine board, Lee pointed out that compared to ETFs or on-chain custody models, Ethereum fiscal public companies have five structural advantages:

1. They can purchase ETH by issuing additional shares when the stock price is above net asset value, thus achieving a reflexive increase in net asset value per share;

2. They can hedge volatility using tools such as convertible bonds and selling options, reducing financing costs while achieving low-cost or even zero-cost positioning;

3. They have the ability to acquire other on-chain fiscal companies, thereby further amplifying the NAV leverage;

4. They can expand ETH staking, DeFi yields, on-chain infrastructure, and other businesses, building sustainable cash flow sources;

5. Once their ETH holdings occupy a core position in the on-chain ecosystem, they may become a key node in stablecoin payment and settlement networks, gaining a position similar to a "sovereign put," potentially becoming a strategic asset prioritized for acquisition by financial institutions.

Lee emphasized that as platforms such as Robinhood launch stock tokenization services on Ethereum Layer 2, more institutions are embracing compliant and scalable blockchain platforms, and Ethereum is currently the only main chain that meets regulatory adaptability, ecological maturity, and scale effects.

In a CoinDesk interview, he summarized, "Stablecoins have driven the crypto industry to a breakthrough similar to ChatGPT. Wall Street is looking for a chain that can carry real assets and comply with regulations, and Ethereum is becoming that intersection point." Fundstrat analysts set a short-term technical target for ETH at $4,000, believing its fair value by year-end could reach $10,000 to $15,000. Lee said, "Allocating ETH at the current price is an effective path for corporate finances to achieve tenfold potential."