TLDR:

• Bitmine anchored a $125M institutional round for Eightco with a $75M check, gaining indirect OpenAI exposure through it.
  
• Eightco deployed $50M from the Bitmine-led round directly into an OpenAI stake, linking crypto capital to private AI markets.
  
• Bitmine added 65,000 ETH in just seven days, growing its total holdings to 4,595,562 ETH as part of its treasury strategy.
  
• Tom Lee is building a portfolio where ETH accumulation funds AI-sector bets, treating crypto and artificial intelligence as one converging play.

Tom Lee and Bitmine ($BMNR) executed three simultaneous moves that together form one coherent strategy. Bitmine led a $125 million institutional funding round for Eightco, putting in $75 million directly.

Eightco then used $50 million of those proceeds to buy into OpenAI. Separately, Bitmine added 65,000 ETH in seven days, bringing its total to 4,595,562 ETH.

Taken together, the three moves reveal a firm betting on crypto and AI converging — and using one to fund the other.

Three Moves, One Strategy: How the Eightco Deal Connects to OpenAI

The first move was Bitmine anchoring a $125 million round for Eightco with a $75 million check. Other institutional investors covered the remaining $50 million in the raise.

Once the round closed, Eightco directed $50 million of those proceeds into an OpenAI stake. That chain of capital created indirect OpenAI exposure for Bitmine through a public market vehicle.

Milk Road noted on X that Eightco currently trades at under $0.01 per share. Yet Bitmine’s stake in the company is now valued at roughly $83 million.

That figure is already above the original $75 million entry point. The appreciation followed the market reaction to the OpenAI investment becoming public.

Private access to OpenAI is not available through conventional market channels. Tom Lee and Bitmine structured the Eightco route as a way around that barrier.

The move places Bitmine inside the AI arms race at the private level. Most public market investors cannot replicate that position through any standard exchange.

Bitmine also holds a $200 million stake in Beast Industries alongside $1.2 billion in unencumbered cash. That capital base gives the firm room to keep executing deals at scale.

However, the Eightco stake is the one that draws a direct line to artificial intelligence. It is the move that turns a crypto treasury into an AI portfolio.

The ETH Accumulation Is the Engine Powering Every Move

The third move was the quietest — but it runs underneath everything else. Bitmine grew its ETH holdings from 4.53 million to 4,595,562 in a single week.

That is 65,000 ETH added in seven days at a deliberate and consistent pace. The accumulation is not incidental; it is the fuel behind the broader deployment strategy.

The firm also carries 196 BTC, rounding out a crypto-heavy balance sheet. Together with the cash reserves, Bitmine operates with a highly liquid and diversified base.

That liquidity is what made leading a nine-figure round possible on short notice. The crypto holdings function as a war chest, not a long-term passive position.

Each move connects back to the same underlying thesis. ETH builds the treasury, the treasury funds Eightco, and Eightco buys into OpenAI.

The structure creates a chain where crypto accumulation directly enables AI-sector exposure. Tom Lee has constructed a portfolio where the two asset classes work in tandem.

Milk Road summarized the approach clearly — Bitmine is not picking crypto over AI or AI over crypto. Instead, the firm is wagering on a world where the two converge at the infrastructure level.

The Eightco stake makes that thesis concrete and measurable. Every move made this week points in exactly the same direction.

Prediction market activity has climbed sharply as traders flock to contracts tied to the escalating US-Iran conflict, while Washington moves toward clearer federal rules for event contracts and a legislative push to explicitly bar markets tied to war, terrorism and death.

Notional trading volume on Polymarket and Kalshi rose to new all-time highs during the week ending Monday, March 9, to $2.49 billion and $2.85 billion, respectively, according to Token Terminal data. The growing activity has pushed the total notional volume across all prediction markets to $145 billion through 2.8 million unique users, data from Dune shows.

While the ongoing conflict drives more activity to these platforms, US regulators are seeking public feedback on new prediction market legislation and weighing a potential ban on war and terrorism-related event contracts.

US lawmakers race to regulate prediction markets

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)  issued a staff advisory classifying event contracts on prediction markets as a “financial asset class,” Cointelegraph reported on Thursday.

The regulator also submitted an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, asking for public comment on how the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) would apply to prediction markets. The move came weeks after CFTC chair Michael Selig publicly reiterated claims that the CFTC had “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets.

Last Monday, an Ohio judge pushed back against the claim in a ruling, saying that Kalshi had failed to show the CEA “would necessarily preempt Ohio’s sports gambling laws,” or that these sports betting contracts would fall under the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the CFTC.

Kalshi is headquartered in New York and regulated by the CFTC as a Designated Contract Market (DCM).

Polymarket US is also headquartered in New York City and has been operating under the CFTC since late 2025, after acquiring CFTC-licensed QCX LLC for $112 million and rebranding to Polymarket US. Polymarket’s offshore platform remains separate from Polymarket US, the company’s federally regulated US venue.

In January 2022, the CFTC charged Polymarket’s parent company, Blockratize, with illegally offering unregistered event-based options contracts. Polymarket settled by paying $1.4 million in civil monetary penalties and winding down unlicensed operations before the restructuring.

In November 2025, the CFTC issued an Amended Order of Designation for Polymarket US, vacating prior restrictions and authorizing trading as a DCM.

Related: Kalshi, Polymarket face trading halt in Nevada after court rulings

Senator seeks to ban war-related prediction market contracts

On Tuesday, US Democratic Party Senator Adam Schiff introduced new legislation seeking to ban federally-regulated prediction markets from listing contracts tied to war, terrorism, assassination, and individual deaths.

The so-called DEATH BETS Act seeks to amend the CEA to include a ban on similar contracts for entities overseen by the CFTC.

The proposition followed renewed insider trading allegations, after six Polymarket traders netted $1 million by accurately betting on the US strike against Iran.

In February, Israeli authorities arrested and indicted two people suspected of using secret information about Israel’s strike on Iran for insider trading on Polymarket.

Prediction market activity has been rising since the beginning of the recent US and Israeli military conflict with Iran. Politics-related contracts soared to become the third-largest category on Polymarket at $598 million and the eighth-largest on Kalshi with $16 million, based on last week’s notional trading volume seen on Dune.

Magazine: Inside a 30,000 phone bot farm stealing crypto airdrops from real users