Bitmine chairman Tom Lee has said a crypto bull market is underway and could strengthen in the fourth quarter as the Ethereum treasury company added another 27,562 ETH worth roughly $75 million.

According to Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Lee believes the bull market began in late June, supported by capital rotating from artificial intelligence stocks into crypto, stronger fundamentals around tokenization and AI, and what he described as the end of the four year crypto cycle.

“We believe a crypto bull market is underway, having started in late June, driven by a multitude of factors including the rotation from AI back to crypto, strengthening crypto fundamentals centered around both tokenization and AI and lastly, the ending of the 4-year cycle,” Lee said.

His comments accompanied Bitmine’s latest weekly treasury update, which showed its Ethereum holdings had climbed to 5,983,940 ETH. The position was worth around $16.3 billion at current prices, while the company reported $17.1 billion in total crypto, cash, marketable securities and other investments.

Tom Lee expects crypto bull market to strengthen in Q4

Lee pointed to Ethereum’s performance during the third quarter as one reason for expecting further gains during the final three months of 2026.

According to the Bitmine chairman, ETH has outperformed other macro assets by 6,519 basis points quarter to date. He described that performance as a possible precursor to a stronger move during the fourth quarter.

“To us, this massive outperformance of ETH in 3Q26 is viewed as a prelude to a potentially stronger up move in the 4th quarter of 2026,” Lee said.

Institutional positioning could provide another source of demand, according to Lee. He said institutions remained underweight crypto during 2026, partly because AI stocks had performed strongly earlier in the year, but expects that allocation gap to narrow during the remainder of 2026.

“We expect institutions to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026,” Lee said. “We believe this could add meaningful upside to the gains seen since June 30.”

Lee has maintained a bullish view on Ethereum through its recent recovery. In August, Ethereum gained 29% over seven days as Lee argued that a rotation toward ETH had begun, with the token outperforming Bitcoin during the same period.

US spot Ethereum exchange traded funds attracted $365 million during July compared with $205 million for Bitcoin funds, providing another measure of institutional demand during that period.

A month later, crypto.news previously reported that Lee identified the approaching CLARITY Act vote, renewed Korean crypto demand and the four year market cycle as potential market catalysts heading into the final months of the year.

Lee said at the time that the four year cycle was “bottoming within the next few weeks,” while tokenization and agentic AI could support institutional demand for crypto.

Bitmine adds another 27,562 ETH

Against that market view, Bitmine continued its Ethereum accumulation during the past week, purchasing another 27,562 ETH since its Sept. 14 update.

The company did not disclose an average purchase price for the acquisition. At current prices, the tokens are worth close to $75 million.

Bitmine held 5,956,378 ETH a week earlier after acquiring 27,180 tokens, meaning its latest purchase pushed the treasury to within roughly 16,000 ETH of the 6 million mark.

The company has continued buying Ethereum every week since beginning its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025. Its holdings stood at 5,901,112 ETH at the end of August after a 53,501 ETH purchase, leaving the treasury up by more than 82,000 ETH over the following three weeks.

Bitmine’s current holdings represent more than 4.9% of Ethereum’s circulating supply of approximately 122.1 million ETH. The company said it has now completed 98% of its “Alchemy of 5%” target, under which it plans to control 5% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.

Lee has previously linked Ethereum’s investment case to the expansion of tokenized financial assets and AI applications. In August, he expected Ethereum to outperform Bitcoin during the current cycle, while Fundstrat data cited by Bitmine showed an 80% correlation between the company’s shares and ETH.

More than 5 million ETH is now staked

Bitmine’s accumulation has been accompanied by a large increase in the amount of Ethereum committed to staking.

As of Sept. 20, the company had 5,067,309 ETH staked, worth roughly $13.8 billion and representing around 85% of its total Ethereum holdings.

“Bitmine has staked more ETH than other entities in the world,” Lee said.

Based on the company’s seven day annualized staking yield of 2.62%, Bitmine projects its current position could generate approximately $357 million in annual staking revenue.

If its entire Ethereum treasury is eventually staked through its Made in America Validator Network, known as MAVAN, and other staking partners, Lee said annual rewards could reach $421 million.

Staking has become a significant source of revenue for the company as its treasury has expanded. During the three months ended May 31, Ethereum staking generated $45.7 million of Bitmine’s $46.5 million in quarterly revenue.

Bitmine remains the largest Ethereum treasury holder

Bitmine remains the largest public Ethereum treasury company, followed by SharpLink and The Ether Machine, which hold approximately 888,938 ETH and 496,712 ETH, respectively, according to Strategic ETH Reserve data cited in the update.

Its nearly 5.98 million ETH treasury makes Bitmine the second largest public crypto treasury company by the value of its principal digital asset holdings.

Strategy remains the largest after its latest weekly purchase increased its Bitcoin holdings to 846,000 BTC, worth approximately $71.9 billion at current prices. The position represents more than 4% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply cap.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy has resumed Bitcoin accumulation after a brief two-week pause, buying 950 BTC for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670 per coin, according to a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

The latest purchase lifted Strategy’s Bitcoin holdings to 846,000 BTC, acquired for roughly $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per Bitcoin (including fees and expenses). With Bitcoin quoted around $84,925 at the time of publication, the company reported an unrealized gain of about $8.05 billion on its treasury position, based on the figures included in its filing and CoinGecko’s price reference.

Key takeaways

• Strategy bought 950 BTC for $75.7 million (avg. $79,670) after pausing for about two weeks, per an SEC Form 8-K.
• Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury now totals 846,000 BTC, with the company citing an unrealized gain of roughly $8.05 billion versus a referenced BTC price of $84,925.
• Alongside Bitcoin buys, Strategy continued repurchasing its STRC preferred stock—spending $174 million for about 1.77 million shares.
• Strategy’s “USD Cash” balance fell to $1.05 billion, while “USD Reserve” edged down to $5.04 billion following dividend and debt-interest payments.
• Strategy’s action aligns with broader corporate Bitcoin accumulation activity, including Strive’s reported addition of 1,355 BTC last week.

Bitcoin buying resumes at Strategy

Strategy’s SEC filing details the pace and cost of its most recent Bitcoin acquisition. The company reported purchasing 950 BTC between Monday and Sunday for $75.7 million, returning to its announced accumulation program after an earlier stretch of inactivity lasting roughly two weeks.

The move matters for investors who monitor whether the company’s treasury strategy remains consistent through market cycles. Even when Bitcoin prices fluctuate, Strategy’s approach depends on a steady deployment plan—one that is now being carried out while it also manages preferred securities and capital levels.

After the transaction, Strategy said its Bitcoin portfolio consists of 846,000 BTC acquired for approximately $63.8 billion at an average cost of $75,416 per coin (including fees and expenses). The referenced Bitcoin price of $84,925 at the time of publication implied an unrealized gain of about $8.05 billion.

Preferred stock repurchases continue with STRC buybacks

While Strategy added to its Bitcoin holdings, it simultaneously continued reducing its preferred equity exposure. The company reported that it repurchased approximately 1.77 million shares of its perpetual preferred stock, STRC, for about $174 million during the same week.

In pre-market trading on Monday, STRC was up 0.35% to $98.85. Strategy also stated it had $875.1 million remaining under its preferred-stock repurchase program and $1 billion available under its MSTR share repurchase program.

Separately, the filing notes that Strategy reported no sales under its at-the-market offering programs between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20, indicating the company did not raise incremental capital through those facilities during that window.

Cash buffers shrink as Strategy pays dividends and services debt

Strategy’s ability to balance Bitcoin buys with equity buybacks hinges on its treasury liquidity. In its most recent reporting, the company showed that its deployable cash declined.

“USD Cash” fell nearly 20% to $1.05 billion from $1.30 billion a week earlier, when Strategy had last reported a higher cash position. Meanwhile, its “USD Reserve” decreased slightly to $5.04 billion from $5.10 billion as the company used $57.4 million to pay preferred-stock dividends and interest on outstanding debt.

Strategy’s stated framework distinguishes between these balances: USD Cash is used for broader treasury purposes, including Bitcoin purchases and capital management, while USD Reserve is intended primarily to support preferred-stock dividends and debt interest. For observers, the direction of these balances is important because it can signal how quickly the company may need to rely on one source of liquidity versus another to sustain both Bitcoin accumulation and capital return activities.

Corporate Bitcoin accumulation stays active beyond Strategy

Strategy’s resumed buying also fits into a wider pattern of corporate treasury activity. Yahoo Finance data cited by the article showed Strategy’s shares rose 7.4% to $165.2 in pre-market trading on Monday.

Another corporate Bitcoin holder, Strive, also announced Bitcoin purchases on Monday. According to the SEC filing linked in the original report, Strive added 1,355 BTC last week, bringing its total holdings to 26,355 coins. Strive’s shares were reported up 6.44% to $32.03.

Together, these updates underline how treasury-focused firms are continuing to deploy capital into Bitcoin while managing their own balance-sheet mechanics—often through a mix of direct purchases, preferred equity activity, and cash reserve management. The exact mix varies from company to company, but the common thread is that Bitcoin accumulation remains a central part of their capital allocation.

Looking ahead, investors should watch whether Strategy maintains this renewed buying cadence while its cash balances continue to adjust—particularly the pace of USD Cash declines versus ongoing STRC repurchases. If Bitcoin prices stay elevated relative to Strategy’s average cost, the company’s unrealized position could remain a powerful narrative driver; however, liquidity trends will likely remain the key factor determining how sustainable both Bitcoin buys and preferred-stock buybacks are over the coming weeks.

Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani believes the next phase of crypto company building could tilt further toward Solana as developers look for networks that are simpler to operate while still offering robust functionality. In a discussion with Cointelegraph, Samani argued that Solana is likely to become the “default” smart contract platform for more firms during the current market cycle, potentially eroding Ethereum’s long-held dominance in that role.

Samani’s stance is notably consistent with his track record: Multicoin accumulated an early position in Solana, and he has been one of its most persistent public advocates. His comments also come as Solana’s token has outperformed Ethereum in the recent upswing, while showing a deeper drawdown during the prior bear market—two dynamics that investors may want to reconcile when assessing the sustainability of the current momentum.

Key takeaways

• Kyle Samani predicts more crypto companies will default to building on Solana instead of Ethereum, citing operational ease and network “functionality.”
• He claims Ethereum’s value accrual is “questionable,” arguing that Ether’s largest role today is tied to stablecoins and collateralized borrowing.
• Recent market performance shows Ether up about 30% over the past month versus Solana’s roughly 34% gain, according to TradingView.
• On a longer window, TradingView data cited by Cointelegraph shows SOL down 59% over the past year versus ETH down 45%.
• DefiLlama fee data referenced in the report shows Solana collecting more monthly fees than Ethereum in the period cited, reinforcing Samani’s operational and usage argument.

Why Samani thinks Solana could replace Ethereum’s “default” status

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s “Trade Secrets,” Samani said he expects Solana to “flip” Ether during the current market cycle. His core argument is not only about technical capability, but about how easy it is for companies to consolidate their operations on a single chain.

“They’ll all switch their default over to Solana because it’s the most functional network for all of them and it’s just easier to consolidate their operations around Solana to the extent that they can.”

From an investor’s perspective, the implication is straightforward: if more new products, deployments, and enterprise-minded launches choose Solana by default, demand for Solana’s ecosystem resources could strengthen relative to Ethereum. At the same time, Samani’s framing suggests he sees network choice as something that compounds—once companies standardize on one environment, switching costs rise for the next set of funding rounds, partnerships, and product iterations.

Samani’s forecast also carries a valuation challenge. The report notes that reaching Ether’s current market cap (about $293 billion at the time of the cited discussion) would require SOL’s market capitalization to multiply roughly fivefold, with SOL referenced at about a $58 billion market cap in the underlying comparison.

Criticism of Ethereum’s value accrual

Alongside his Solana preference, Samani was sharply skeptical about Ethereum’s ability to capture and sustain economic value for token holders. He described Ethereum as a large smart contract network whose asset value accrual is, in his view, unclear or limited.

“It’s a $400 billion to $300 billion asset that has questionable value accrual, if any, and it’s not growing at all.”

Samani argued that investors may not find Ether’s valuation compelling relative to other opportunities available at what he characterized as “more reasonable prices.” He also suggested that Ethereum’s continued relevance stems primarily from stablecoins and from stablecoins or capital strategies that use Ether as collateral—rather than from broader organic adoption that, in his view, would drive stronger accrual mechanics.

Notably, this critique is paired in the report with his prediction that companies will pivot toward Solana. If investors accept the premise that “usage” and “operational convenience” are what drive product ecosystems more than abstract platform status, then Ethereum’s role could shift from default builder environment to a more specialized settlement and liquidity base—at least for certain categories of new deployments.

What the recent market and fees data suggest

The Cointelegraph report ties Samani’s thesis to performance and on-chain activity indicators. In the recent market upturn, both ETH and SOL moved higher in similar percentage ranges, but Solana’s outperformance was slightly stronger in the cited window: Ether rose about 30% over the past month, while Solana rose about 34%, according to TradingView.

The comparison becomes more nuanced when the discussion shifts from short-term rallies to the prior downturn. TradingView data cited by Cointelegraph shows SOL fell about 59% over the past year, versus ETH’s roughly 45% decline. In other words, Solana has had both larger relative losses and slightly stronger recent gains—an asymmetry that can matter to traders assessing risk, drawdown tolerance, and the likelihood of “mean reversion” versus a new regime.

Fees provide another lens. The report states that, while SOL represents less than one-fifth of Ethereum’s market capitalization, Solana has surpassed Ethereum in weekly and monthly fees. According to fee rankings from DefiLlama referenced in the article, Solana generated $23 million in fees over the past 30 days and ranked fourth in monthly fees, while Ethereum generated $12.6 million and ranked in sixth place.

For builders and investors, fee generation can be interpreted in multiple ways. It may signal more demand for blockspace and on-chain execution, but it can also reflect changes in application mix or volatility-driven usage. Still, within Samani’s broader argument—“functionality” and operational consolidation—higher fee throughput is presented as evidence that Solana can deliver measurable economic activity even while competing against Ethereum’s scale.

Samani’s shifting stance—and his continued bet on Solana

The article also revisits Samani’s relationship with the crypto industry over the past few years. In February, he said he was stepping down as managing partner of Multicoin Capital after 10 years in the industry, describing it as a “bittersweet moment.” The report notes that around that time he appeared dispirited about crypto’s broader direction and briefly deleted an X post in which he said he no longer believed in the web3 vision, arguing that crypto had become less interesting than many enthusiasts expected.

But the same report indicates that his outlook did not translate into an exit. In September, Samani joined the US board of directors at crypto trading platform Backpack, suggesting he remained engaged with the operational side of the industry rather than stepping away completely.

On Solana specifically, the report frames the bet as long-running. Samani says he entered crypto through Ethereum in 2016 and later became dissatisfied with how Ethereum developers addressed scaling issues, according to Cointelegraph’s references in the piece. He encountered Solana soon after founding Multicoin in May 2017, and Multicoin went on to lead some of Solana’s earliest investment rounds in 2018.

Multicoin’s prominence is also contextualized in the report: it cites that the firm reported managing $5.9 billion in assets in May 2025, positioning it among the most prominent crypto investment firms. The underlying message is that Samani’s current prediction isn’t coming from a standing-on-the-sidelines viewpoint—it’s tied to a sustained investment and belief structure.

The report further adds biographical context: before co-founding Multicoin, Samani co-founded Pristine, a healthcare IT company that built software for Google Glass used by surgeons.

What to watch next

Samani’s prediction hinges on whether more companies treat Solana as the default operational environment—and whether Ethereum’s value accrual narrative continues to weaken for token holders. Investors should watch for concrete signs of ecosystem consolidation on Solana, alongside continued fee and usage comparisons, to see whether this “default switch” thesis holds beyond commentary.

Perpetual futures on the Bitcoin Volmex Implied Volatility Index (BVIV) debuted on Hyperliquid on Monday, giving traders on the onchain exchange a way to bet on the degree, not direction, of bitcoin’s price swings.

The BVIV Index, often described as a “bitcoin VIX,” tracks cryptocurrency’s expected 30-day implied or expected volatility in real time. The index is analogous to Cboe’s VIX index, which tracks the 30-day implied volatility in Wall Street’s benchmark equity index, S&P 500.

The new perpetual market lets traders go long or short the volatility index directly, instead of having to express volatility views indirectly through options, an approach that is capital-intensive and requires derivatives expertise.

The launch comes as the digital-asset market becomes increasingly institutionalized, drawing in a broader mix of participants – from hedge funds, volatility traders, options-income sellers and beyond.

“The launch of BVIV Index perpetual futures on Hyperliquid is a massive unlock for crypto traders and investors,” said Cole Kennelly, founder and CEO of Volmex Labs. “The market leading Bitcoin volatility index is now available to trade on the market leading onchain perpetual futures exchange, making it easy to hedge, speculate, and utilize pure Bitcoin volatility exposure.”

As the end of the third quarter nears, bitcoin is standing tall some 44% higher, its best performance since the final three months of 2024.

Gold is up 8.7% while the S&P 500 has added just 2%. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s tech-heavy index, Nasdaq, has gained just 2%, according to data source TradingView.

This marks a complete change from early this year when bitcoin was the underperformer and stocks, gripped by the AI fervour, were on a tear.
The good news for BTC bulls doesn’t end there. The cryptocurrency is also outperforming names like NVDA, one of the world’s biggest companies, up 11%.

And yet, bitcoin doesn’t necessarily look expensive based purely on where it trades relative to its record price. Despite the solid rally, prices are still down 48% from the record price of $126,000 in October last year.