Unveiling the two key figures behind the recent surge of ETH: Tom Lee vs. Joseph Rubin

2025-07-30 09:42:18

Collection

Ten years of Ethereum, the power of discourse has shifted.

*Author: Azuma, * Odaily Planet Daily

ETH has become the biggest focus in this round of market recovery, and companies like BitMine (BMNR) and Sharplink Gaming (SBET), which represent ETH treasury reserve companies, are undoubtedly the biggest driving forces behind the recent surge in ETH.

Strategic ETH Reserve data shows that as of July 29, Beijing time, BitMine and Sharplink Gaming held 566,800 and 368,000 ETH respectively, valued at $2.14 billion and $1.36 billion, making them the only two entities with holdings exceeding those of the Ethereum Foundation. It is no exaggeration to say that BitMine and Sharplink Gaming have now surpassed the Ethereum Foundation in terms of price influence on ETH, with their respective leaders Tom Lee and Joseph Rubin being regarded as the true decision-makers of the current ETH price trend.

Tom Lee: Former Chief Equity Strategist at JPMorgan, Cryptocurrency "Bullish"

Tom Lee's full name is Thomas Jong Lee. He was born in Westland, Michigan, to Korean immigrant parents and is the third of four siblings. Tom Lee did not come from a financial family; his father is a retired psychiatrist, and his mother was previously a housewife before opening a Subway franchise.

Tom Lee graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School, majoring in finance and accounting. During his time at the University of Pennsylvania, Tom Lee joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, which Business Insider ranked as one of the top 17 Wall Street alumni associations. Tom Lee is a Chartered Financial Analyst and an active member of the New York Society of Security Analysts and the Economic Club of New York.

In the early 1990s, Tom Lee began his Wall Street career, initially working at Kidder, Peabody & Company, and later joining Salomon Smith Barney, a core investment bank under Citigroup. In 1999, Tom Lee joined JPMorgan as Chief Equity Strategist.

In 2002, Tom Lee gave a bearish outlook on the stock of Nextel during an analysis, but faced strong backlash, leading to nationwide attention, with The Wall Street Journal also reporting on the controversy.

In 2014, Tom Lee left JPMorgan to start his own boutique research consulting firm, Fundstrat Global Advisors, where he serves as the head of research.

In 2017, Tom Lee began to focus on the cryptocurrency sector, frequently analyzing and predicting cryptocurrency market trends. Unlike his previous dual perspectives in the stock market, Tom Lee has almost always maintained a bullish outlook on cryptocurrency, with extremely aggressive price predictions—such as forecasting that BTC would break $200,000 in 2022 during a market low in 2021…

Because of this, many retail investors in the Reddit stock and cryptocurrency communities often tease Tom Lee, believing he only "blindly bullish" and that his analyses "won't yield new insights."

On June 30, 2025, Tom Lee's career took a new turn. On that day, BitMine, a publicly listed company on the New York Stock Exchange, announced it would raise $250 million to initiate an ETH treasury strategy, led by MOZAYYX, with participation from Founders Fund, Pantera, FalconX, Republic Digital, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, DCG, Diametric Capital, Occam Crest Management, and Tom Lee. Additionally, Tom Lee was appointed as Chairman of BitMine.

Subsequently, BitMine welcomed investments from PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley venture capital giant Peter Thiel, as well as "Cathie Wood," the "female version of Buffett," under Ark Investment, with the former acquiring 9.1% of BitMine shares and the latter subscribing to approximately 4.77 million shares of BitMine stock, valued at $182 million at the time.

Meanwhile, BitMine also initiated a frenzied "buy buy buy" mode, and within just one month, the company's ETH holdings surged to 566,776, surpassing both the Ethereum Foundation and Sharplink Gaming, another earlier ETH treasury company.

As BitMine topped the ETH holdings leaderboard, Tom Lee also reiterated his bullish confidence in ETH—just days ago, in an interview with CoinDesk, Tom Lee mentioned that if we refer to Circle's current valuation level, then an ETH rise to $15,000 would be completely reasonable.

Joseph Rubin: Co-founder of Ethereum, Founder of Consensys, MetaMask, and Linea

Compared to Tom Lee, Joseph Rubin's story may be more well-known in the industry. Joseph Rubin joined the Ethereum development team as early as the end of 2013 when Vitalik released the Ethereum white paper and is widely regarded as one of the eight co-founders of Ethereum.

Joseph Rubin was born and raised in an intellectual family in Toronto, Canada. In 1987, Joseph Rubin graduated from Princeton University, majoring in electrical engineering and computer science. Notably, during his time at Princeton, Joseph Rubin was a peer of Michael Novogratz, who has since become the CEO of the cryptocurrency giant Galaxy Digital.

In the early years after graduation, Joseph Rubin worked in technical development at several software technology companies in Canada and the United States. In the late 1990s, Joseph Rubin joined Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest investment banks, serving as Vice President of Technology in the Private Wealth Management division, where he gained extensive experience in financial technology.

Within the Ethereum founding team, Joseph Rubin plays a role similar to that of a "strategic architect"—helping to shape the organizational structure, establish relationships with partners, raise funds for projects, and coordinate early business activities.

In 2015, to promote the application of Ethereum on-chain, Joseph Rubin founded the Ethereum infrastructure development company Consensys. Today, Consensys has nurtured dozens of well-known sub-projects, including the wallet application MetaMask and the Layer 2 network Linea.

On May 27, 2025, publicly listed company SharpLink Gaming announced it had signed a securities purchase agreement to conduct a $425 million private placement for purchasing ETH as the company's main treasury reserve asset. Consensys was the lead investor in this financing, and Joseph Lubin was appointed as Chairman of the Board of SharpLink Gaming, serving as a strategic advisor to assist in the development of the company's core business.

Since then, SharpLink Gaming has continued to increase its ETH holdings and became the first entity to surpass the Ethereum Foundation in holdings on July 14. Although the company's holdings were later surpassed by BitMine, it remains an undeniable force within the Ethereum ecosystem.

On the Tenth Anniversary, the Discourse Power of Ethereum is Shifting

Tomorrow (July 30), Ethereum will officially celebrate its tenth anniversary.

If in the first decade after Ethereum's birth, the discourse power of Ethereum was still firmly held by the Ethereum Foundation, represented by Vitalik, then after stepping out of the first decade, with the deepening integration of ETH and traditional finance—especially under the trend of ETH treasury reserves—new forces represented by BitMine and Sharplink Gaming are gradually accumulating more ETH, and the discourse power of Ethereum is also gradually shifting to these entities with increasingly large holdings.

The continuous expansion of entities like BitMine and Sharplink Gaming will certainly bring some centralization controversies, but in the short to medium term, when the price of ETH has been stagnant for years due to narrative stagnation and intensified competition, leading to declining community sentiment and holder faith, and the outflow of ecological funds and talent, it is the clear buying power brought by ETH treasury companies like BitMine and Sharplink Gaming that has reversed the price downturn and boosted community confidence, which has a very direct positive impact on the stability and development of the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

Cryptocurrency cannot forever remain an independent market detached from traditional financial markets. As bilateral integration progresses, different stages will naturally give rise to different contradictions, ultimately forcing out different solutions. Perhaps these continuously expanding entities will become uncertain factors for Ethereum's continued iteration in the future, but for Ethereum at present, maintaining community confidence is more important than anything else. If the cost of this is merely a transfer of discourse power in such a form, it may not be a bad thing.