Wall Street Legend Tom Lee Fuels 520% Rise In New ETH Treasury Company
Plus, Solana ETFs appear to be imminent as the clock ticks down on crypto's regulatory window in Congress
If ever there were a day to step back and appreciate just how quickly crypto has taken over traditional finance — today may have been it.
Robinhood announced it would be tokenizing stocks in the E.U., Fundstrat’s Tom Lee joined a little-known mining company and sent shares surging 500% as they build out a $250 million Ethereum treasury — and Trump says he’s not willing to divest from the crypto industry as the reporter who challenged him tells Coinage the window to get the critical stablecoin bill passed in D.C. is closing.
Here’s all the big news in crypto condensed down for you as we do every week (also in video episode form.) Let’s dig in…
Crypto’s Window Closing In Washington
As we’ve covered the last few weeks, the interest in crypto on Wall Street is beginning to spill over. It arguably began with Circle’s IPO, which exploded more than 500%. Then, the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, which would essentially legalize stablecoins for other Wall Street giants to also issue their own stablecoins. That has led to a flurry of crypto institutions clamoring to further extend their lead on slower-moving institutions (which we’ll get into in a second.)
But some may be assuming a victory that technically isn’t a guarantee. As we’ve also covered, Democrats are none too pleased with the prospect of President Trump and his family printing billions of dollars with their own stablecoin, USD1. That has led to some backlash, and a surprisingly difficult time in corralling votes and shoring up progress as it moves to the House.
As the sausage-making stalls, it’s clear one thing would help grease the wheels: Trump pulling back or divesting on his own personal crypto endeavors. When asked by Decrypt reporter Sander Lutz point blank about that, Trump gave one of the greatest one-minute none answers of all-time:
So… it’s clear Trump isn’t willing to do that. And if he’s not, what does it mean for the potential win crypto is desperately searching for? Lutz tells us it’s quite important:
“This window we’re in, these few months are probably the most important months there have ever been and maybe ever will be for the crypto industry when it comes to legislation and regulation,” Lutz said, adding that if the House can’t get things set and pushed through for Trump to sign in the next couple weeks, it could be too late.
BitMine’s 500% Pop, ft. Tom Lee
BitMine Immersion Technologies shares surged 400% on Monday after announcing the company would be pivoting to launch another ethereum treasury play — this time with a popular Wall Street legend.
BitMine announced the company is adding Fundstrat's Tom Lee as Chairman and announced a $250 million private placement to stack ether as part of the company's treasury strategy.
The raise included participants across crypto that have participated in other publicly traded treasury plays, including Pantera Capital and Galaxy Digital.
Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin was among the first to carry the trend over to Ethereum with Sharplink gaming. The publicly traded company has seen shares swing wildly as investors calculate what upside may be there if these ethereum treasury companies can capture just a fraction of the same success. (As a fun aside, Joe Lubin popped by the Coinage studio this past week to say hi.)
Robinhood Adds Tokenized Stocks
Following Kraken’s announcement last month that it would be adding tokenized equities on Solana for non-U.S. users, Robinhood is following up by adding its own trading on Arbitrum.
On the sidelines of ETHcc in Cannes, an ascot-wearing Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev made the announcement in a highly produced and scripted back-and-forth with other execs before inviting Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin onstage. It’s quite the glow up for Vlad — who just years ago was getting absolutely grilled in Congress about Robinhood’s role in the GameStop trading meltdown.
The move by Robinhood will enable stock trading on Ethereum Layer-2 Artbitrum in the EU, and is a huge win for the Ethereum crowd in its race against Solana to win institutions.
It wasn’t too long ago that early Solana investor Kyle Samani was telling us Solana was set to inherit all of that as Ethereum took too long to get transaction prices down:
“The reality is that [the] Ethereum guys just totally missed the mark. They didn't scale, gas fees spiked through the roof, people got really pissed and they said, 'OK, these guys don't care about my user experience. I'm going to go elsewhere.' And Solana was really the primary beneficiary of that," he said.
But with this win, it could be just the proof Ethereum needed to show that its Layer-2 thesis worked. That — coupled with some Bitcoin-like treasury buys from Wall Street — may very well trigger an ETH run many are still sleeping on.
A Win For SOL & ETH?
As much as it makes for good TV to write that Ethereum and Solana are always in constant battle, let’s be honest — a win for one may very well still be a win for both.
Case in point, it appears the first Solana staking ETF may make its way through the SEC approval process this week. Solana had outperformed this weekend and even traded above $158 on Monday.
The CEO behind the REX-Osprey SOL + Staking ETF said the fund may go live as soon as Wednesday — and while it’s not going live via the more complex SEC pathway as the other ETFs have in the past, it could be signal the rest of the big Solana ETF applications may also soon be approved.
If that’s the case, they could also include staking. And if they do, it’s hard to think that the SEC would deny the ETH ETF issuers who had also filed to be able to stake the ETH they hold.
Mayhaps the wins are mutual this time around. Certainly we’ll be watching developments in D.C. to see if that’s the case.
Elsewhere in Web3:
Humanity Protocol token plummets as founder admits network could be up to 88% bots
Monero-only hacker IntelBroker caught after accepting Bitcoin from FBI
That’s all for now. Catch all the other big headlines at Coinage.Media, or on our YouTube. If you haven’t yet — consider minting a Coinage membership, or stake with us to support the leading community-owned media project in Web3.