Here Comes Retail
Bitmine Invests $200M into Beast Industries
It’s no secret that retail has left the crypto scene. But not only have they left — they left with a horrible taste in their mouths. Between meme coins and NFT mania, retail has very little understanding of what’s actually taking place in the broader shift in financial technology. And honestly, can you really blame them? There was a whole lot of extraction going on, and not a lot of education.
If you’re active at all within crypto communities, you can see that participation numbers are completely down, and the only people who remain are the true die-hard supporters of the technology.
So how does retail come back? That’s always been one of the biggest questions within the crypto community. Tom Lee & Bitmine (Ethereum Treasury Company) may have just found an answer with a $200M investment.
The saying, “crypto will become mainstream when people don’t realize they’re using crypto,” gets thrown around a lot — and for good reason. If the last major wave of technological innovation has shown us anything, it’s that people will sign up for almost anything, skim the details, and just use it — as long as it improves their lives. They don’t want to think too much about how it works. The value has to be obvious.
With the amount of money Bitmine just invested into MrBeast, to access his audience, I have to believe this was at the forefront of their decision. I think they will do everything they can to create a personal experience, promoted through media — whether that’s through videos on YouTube or a streaming platform — where people can make real money that meaningfully impacts their lives, all powered by crypto rails. It is insane how quickly something can become a norm, but that only happens with a strong spreading mechanism anchored by a great personalized consumer experience. Crypto is just waiting for its iPhone moment to break through into the mainstream, and I would guess they’re going to be the ones to try to make it happen.
Let’s dive a little deeper into what this means for everyone involved.
Bitmine operates as a crypto treasury company with a primary focus on Ethereum. This model was popularized by Michael Saylor’s company, Strategy, which structured its business primarily around accumulating Bitcoin as a treasury asset through various financial instruments.
Tom Lee is well known on Wall Street. He’s built a reputation for going against the grain, making bold assumptions, and often being right. His next massive bet is crypto — and, more specifically, Ethereum. In his view, Ethereum is a superior asset around which to build a treasury company.
Ethereum has native mechanisms that allow you to generate value simply by holding the asset, without taking on additional risk. This is baked directly into the technology. The asset itself helps the platform function, and in return, holders receive additional resources. In theory, everything you can do with a Bitcoin treasury company, you could do even more effectively with Ethereum because of this underlying design.
Pair that with Tom Lee’s thesis that Ethereum is essentially the “Wall Street blockchain,” and that Ether is the modern-day equivalent of oil in a fully digital economy, and the bet becomes clearer.
Everything is moving on-chain. Every news network repeats it. Every financial heavyweight says the same thing. Tom Lee is betting that a significant portion of this future infrastructure will be built on Ethereum — which would naturally lead to substantial appreciation in the value of Ether that Bitmine has accumulated and will continue to accumulate.
But if this is truly a blockchain for the masses — for retail — people actually need to use it. And that’s where things get difficult. To be blunt, most Web3 marketing has been pretty horrific. It’s hard to overcome a perception shaped by real experiences of people losing money.
Blockchain and crypto are superior technologies for much of our financial lives, but if no one uses them, that advantage doesn’t matter. The path to adoption is a great consumer experience — one where people don’t have to think, don’t feel friction, and don’t even realize they’re using crypto. It just makes their lives better, and the value is obvious.
And MrBeast is retail.
He leveraged the growth of YouTube and an obsessive focus on creating highly clickable, highly watchable content to become a massive media mogul — building billion-dollar brands through his connection with a mass audience.
MrBeast may not have the depth of relationship with his viewers that a podcaster like Joe Rogan has, but when you’re trying to shift the perception of the general public, there are very few people better positioned. Pair that influence with the right on-ramp — something that lets people try blockchain in a tangible, rewarding way — and you give retail a reason to re-engage and actually feel the value crypto can add to their daily lives.
Because of that, this number doesn’t feel out of bounds to me at all.
Many people are criticizing Bitmine for this partnership, arguing that the money should have been used to buy more Ethereum. But if the entire thesis depends on mainstream adoption and real usage, then spreading the message and creating demand is more important than holding a larger quantity of an asset no one is using.
Picture this: imagine trying to sell oil before engines existed. Would you rather own all the oil in the world with no cars — or have the horses?
Until the infrastructure and consumer experiences are built around this technology, none of the long-term predictions can play out. To me, this partnership makes a lot of sense — and I think it could ultimately make MrBeast one of the richest people of all time.
Time will tell. But as a social media strategist myself, I think a lot of the crypto crowd criticizing Tom Lee should give him some respect — and more importantly, some time.
But hey, maybe I’m a massive idiot. We’ll see.
Have a great day, and don’t forget to subscribe to Memes and Markets.
Love ya. See you next time.
Ben.
AI DISCLOSURE
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