rewrite this title MrBeast platform gets $200 million investment from Tom Lee’s Bitmine

The media platform founded by Jimmy Donaldson, known as the popular YouTuber MrBeast, is drawing a $200 million investment from Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the world’s leading ethereum treasury company.

The Bitmine investment in Beast Industries is designed to back a digital outlet that has more than 450 million subscribers and attracts more than 5 billion monthly views. The deal closes on or about Jan. 19.

“It’s our view that ethereum, which is a smart contract platform, is the future of finance, where digitalization of not only dollars but stocks and equities [are] going to take place,” Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “Over time, that really blurs what is a service versus what’s digital money, and that’s where a collaboration and investment into Beast Industries makes sense.”

Alongside Lee, who also serves as head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, key investors in Bitmine include ARK’s Cathie Wood, Bill Miller III and Galaxy Digital.

“I think it’s part of the sort of evolution of digital platforms and money, and I think it’s really uniting the No. 1 creator in the world with the biggest ethereum platform in the world,” Lee added.

Shares of Bitmine were up more than 1% premarket Thursday after the announcement. The stock has already soared more than 20% since New Year’s, far surpassing the 1% gain in the S&P 500.

Addressing the broader cryptocurrency universe, Lee is optimistic on both bitcoin and ethereum, anticipating the former will reach a new all-time high in 2026. He’s even more bullish on ethereum, expecting its performance to outpace bitcoin this year.

Lee’s bullishness comes as the Senate Agriculture and Banking committees are expected to hold hearings this month on a crypto market structure bill that offers guardrails for the industry.

“Crypto really got hurt [in] October last year, so it is our view that we’re going to have a pretty big recovery as we put more time between that moment,” Lee said.