Morning Minute: Saylor and Tom Lee Purchase Massive – Decrypt

Morning Minute is a each day e-newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The evaluation and opinions expressed are his personal and don’t essentially mirror these of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

At present’s high information:

• Crypto majors fall 1-3%; BTC at $90,600
• The CFTC to pilot tokenized collateral with BTC, ETH & USDC used as collateral
• Saylor ($963M) and Tom Lee ($429M) each purchase massive final week
• BlackRock recordsdata S-1 for ETH staking ETF ‘ETHB’
• Stripe rolls out stablecoin funds throughout EVM networks

💰 Saylor and Tom Lee Go Massive on Bitcoin and Ethereum

Two of the largest names in crypto investing purchased massive final week.

And proved that they nonetheless have the flexibility to lift capital throughout market downturns.

📌 What Occurred

Each Michael Saylor and Tom Lee quietly loaded up final week.

First, Saylor’s Technique added $963M in BTC (10,624 BTC to be precise) to its stability sheet, marking certainly one of its largest buys for the reason that summer time.

That complete is greater than your complete quantity of BTC purchased by Saylor over the previous 3 months.

Then got here Tom Lee, whose agency BitMine boosted its Ethereum holdings to $12B by buying one other $429M in ETH (138,452 ETH to be precise).

Maybe most notable, BitMine added to its money place throughout the week as nicely, now holding $1B in money (up from $800M).

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“BitMine supplied its newest holdings replace for Dec eighth, 2025: $13.2 billion in complete crypto + “moonshots”: -3,864,951 ETH at $3,139 per ETH

– 192 Bitcoin (BTC)

– $36 million stake in Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS) (“moonshots”) and

– complete money of $1.0 billion.” – BitMNR on X

“MSTR raised $1B in a single week, the identical quantity it took them 4 months to lift in 2020. The exponential pattern continues” – James Van Straten, Coindesk analyst, on X

🧠 Why It Issues

There was a variety of concern in regards to the DAT commerce unwinding, and neither Saylor nor Tom Lee have been spared from that dialog.

The warmth turned up much more just lately when it was broadly speculated that Technique would begin to promote BTC if and when its mNAV dipped beneath 1.

Properly, it acquired very near 1 on this newest downturn – and he’s not promoting.

In reality, the other. He’s shopping for and in massive measurement.

It’s relieving for the MSTR bulls on the market and confidence-building for these involved about how Saylor would act on this downturn.

However what’s extra notable, particularly from a near-term buying and selling perspective, is Tom Lee’s capability to lift capital throughout this ETH downturn.

BMNR inventory dipped over 60% from native highs, and but, the crew has been capable of hold slamming its ATM and elevating money.

This has enabled Tom to purchase a ton of ETH and develop his money pile.

And for perspective, his $429M purchase is about 2x the scale of Saylor’s $1B purchase in market cap perspective (BTC is 5x ETH in market cap).

The ETH / BTC ratio is up 4% on the month now and searching prefer it’s prepared to interrupt out of a 3-month downturn.

That issues as a result of ETH breaking out usually means some type of “alt season” rally towards Bitcoin the place a number of tokens see comparatively massive features in a brief interval.

The truth that Tom remains to be sitting on $1B in money (and is motivated to decrease his common buy worth from $4k/ETH on this dip) means that he’s prone to stay a heavy purchaser – which is sweet for ETH, and maybe, for alts.

Tom Lee and crew may ship the Santa Rally that crypto bulls are hoping for…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A couple of Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are barely pink; BTC -1% at $90,600; ETH even at $3,130, BNB -2% at $888, SOL -3% at $133
• ZEC (+11%), ADA (+3%) and DASH (+3%) led high movers
• The CFTC will pilot tokenized collateral with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC, permitting tokenized variations of crypto and stablecoins for use as collateral in derivatives markets.
• BlackRock filed an S-1 for its new ETH staking ETF ‘ETHB’ which is able to monitor the returns of spot ETH and likewise add rewards from the portion of their staked ETH holdings
• Tether invested in Italian humanoid-robotics startup Generative Bionics
• The variety of Bitcoin wallets holding greater than 0.1 BTC has dropped during the last two years
• The SEC concluded its investigation into Ondo Finance with no fees filed
• PayPal’s stablecoin PYUSD noticed a 224% surge in circulating provide during the last three months
• The U.Okay. authorities unveiled a brand new anti-corruption technique geared toward crypto-related crime
• Stripe rolled out stablecoin funds settled in USD throughout Ethereum, Base & Polygon

In Company Treasuries / ETFs

• Saylor’s Technique purchased 10,624 BTC (~$962.7M) final week at a ~$90,615 common
• Tom Lee’s BMNR purchased $429M in ETH final week and upped their money holdings to $1B

In Memes / Onchain Movers

• Memecoin leaders are combined and principally flat; DOGE -1%, Shiba +1%, PEPE -2%, PENGU +1%, BONK +1%, TRUMP -1%, SPX -8%, and FARTCOIN -7%
• Franklin (+40%), 67 (+23%) and Kabuto (+54%) led notable movers
• Avici fell 25% after sharing newest income numbers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Right here’s a rundown of main token, protocol and airdrop information from the day:

• XGames teased a Rekt Drinks partnership and rocked a Rektguy PFP on X
• Farcaster shifted from a social platform to wallets and buying and selling after cofounder Dan Romero mentioned the social community by no means discovered pmf
• Steady, a stablecoin chain backed by Bitfinex & powered by UDDT, launched its mainnet and STABLE token yesterday, debuting at $1.6B fdv ($300M mc)
• MegaETH introduced that Frontier will go stay subsequent week for builders
• Talus Labs’ US token will go stay on Binance Alpha on Dec 11
• Myriad’s CEO posted a MYR token replace clarifying the RUG snapshot dealing with, a DCM license pursuit for US operations, MYR use instances & timing choices

🚚 What is occurring in NFTs?

Right here is the record of different notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders have been principally flat; Punks even at 30 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 5.31, BAYC -3% at 5.5 ETH; Hypurr’s -12% at 450 HYPE
• Beeple’s ‘Common Animals’ fell 30% to a 7.5 ETH flooring
• Fwogstr launched as the most recent Technique token, sits at $300k mc; FWOGS NFTs fell 43% to 0.124 ETH
• Mocaverse introduced a popularity platform stay on MocaChain testnet