Wall Street analyst points one major asset missing from most portfolios

Wall Street analyst points one major asset missing from most portfolios originally appeared on TheStreet.

Tom Lee has seen market cycles come and go. But when it comes to one asset class, he believes most investors are still early — and dangerously underexposed.

In a new conversation, the veteran strategist made a bold comparison, likening today’s adoption levels to the internet circa 1996.

Join the discussion with Scott Melker on Roundtable here.

“95% of investors have zero Bitcoin exposure. So you’re still way ahead if you’re buying Bitcoin today. If you look at Bitcoin wallets, comparing it to the Internet, we’re back to 1996 levels. The Internet went exponential from 1996. So it’s still the earliest days.”

Tom Lee is the co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, a market strategy and research firm. He’s a well-known Wall Street analyst with decades of experience covering equities and macro trends. Lee gained recognition for making bold, often early, calls on market cycles — including bullish forecasts on tech and digital assets.

What’s Lee really saying here?

For context: back in 1996, less than 1% of the world had access to the internet. Email was still a novelty, websites loaded line-by-line, and few could have imagined what a trillion-dollar digital economy would look like. In his view, the current financial system is sitting at a similar inflection point — and some investors are still treating it like a passing fad.

Lee sees the need for secure, trustless systems accelerating in a world where “nothing is real” — from deepfake voices to AI-generated content.

“I think Bitcoin is very useful, because in the future we’re not going to be able to trust anything. There’s nothing secure anymore. We can sample your voice… You’ll never know what’s true anymore. You need to be able to trust a system. The Bitcoin blockchain is the most trusted blockchain.”

For institutional players, he believes the writing is already on the wall.

“That’s why the United States wants to have a million Bitcoin, US companies are buying Bitcoin [and] banks will soon carry Bitcoin as collateral.”

Join the discussion with WendyO on Roundtable here.

In other words, the so-called “early majority” may be closer than it looks.

Lee didn’t stop there. He also pointed to the infrastructure behind stablecoins — which are mostly built on the Ethereum network — as another driver of future growth.

“Stablecoins run on Ethereum. As stablecoins explode…Ethereum is the backbone for stablecoins. So I think Ethereum is going to make a big comeback.”

Story ContinuesThat view is already playing out in the market. As of writing, Ethereum is trading around $2,608, up nearly 3% on the day, while stablecoin supply has quietly expanded over the past 12 months — especially in countries where inflation is high or banking systems are unstable.

Wall Street analyst points one major asset missing from most portfolios first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 9, 2025

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 9, 2025, where it first appeared.

View Comments