Bitcoin’s (BTC) whole return profile comes down to a few trading days a year, Fundstrat strategist and BitMine (BMNR) chairman Tom Lee said in an interview this week.
Lee said in an interview on All Things Markets that while Bitcoin has had the best compounded annual return of any asset class over the last 10 to 15 years, if you take away the 10 best days each year, you would be “down 27% per year.” "Crypto makes most of its gains in 10 days," Lee said, arguing the concentration of returns is the core case against trying to time the market.
The same dynamic, he said, plays out in equities. Fundstrat research shows that missing the best days in the S&P 500 (SPX) makes long-term returns negative, something he said explains why the average investor fails to beat the market. The 10 best days in the past three years have accounted for more than 24 percentage points of returns, he said.
Long-term crypto buyers riding the four-year cycle might wait for its “early window” between August and October, with bitcoin potentially in the $50,000 to $60,000 range, Lee said. It’s a very volatile, decentralized asset, so it has no earnings reports or scheduled catalysts to trade around, and any rallies in crypto are typically short-lived, he argued.
Bitcoin’s price trend this year stands in stark contrast to that of the S&P 500 Index. The former has fallen 31.63% since the start of the year, while the latter has risen 9.11%, pushing their return gap to over 40 percentage points. The two assets moved largely in tandem during the first quarter, but began to diverge starting in April. U.S. stocks continued to climb steadily, while Bitcoin’s spring recovery rally collapsed. The cryptocurrency experienced a massive sell-off in June, dropping nearly 35% before rebounding in early July.
BitMine's Position Amid Crypto Winter
Lee has publicly disclosed that, during the downturn in cryptocurrency prices, the company has adopted a prudent, conservative operational approach. It holds approximately $600 million in cash, has staked 80% of its ETH holdings, generates annual "over 250 million a year in staking rewards", and has an annual free cash flow of hundreds of millions of US dollars.
Lee said BitMine has made selective investments, including a disclosed stake tied to YouTube creator MrBeast, and is working with spinoffs from the Ethereum Foundation as well as SharpLink (SBET) and Consensys founder Joe Lubin to fund public goods and help drive enterprise adoption of Ethereum (ETH), with more to come. "There's going to be several more entities announcing funding soon," he said.
Lee acknowledged the stretch has been painful for shareholders, saying the company is positioned for when "crypto winter" ends. "We are in a period where prices are really disappointing, and it's very frustrating," he said.
was trading at $1,762, flat over the last 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around ETH improved to ‘bullish’ from the ‘neutral’ zone over the past day. Chatter around it, however, stayed at ‘normal’ levels.
The second-largest cryptocurrency has been down over 40% so far this year. However, Ethereum’s chart may also be turning. “ETH is clearly starting up a strong uptrend” versus Bitcoin after breaking above key daily moving averages, analyst Michaël van de Poppe said in a Sunday X post, adding he is willing to buy any pullback that happens and expects the pair to run towards the 0.032–0.0325 BTC range — from around 0.028 BTC at the time of his post.