Peter Thiel just bought a big stake in Tom Lee's ether company and the shares are surging

Shares of the ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies surged Wednesday after tech billionaire Peter Thiel disclosed a 9% stake in the firm through his venture capital firm Founders Fund.

The stock was last higher by 12% but rallied as much as 20% at one point. Companies with a similar focus rose in tandem, though they were also off their highs. SharpLink Gaming, which has also initiated an ETH treasury strategy and whose board is chaired by Ethereum cofounder Joe Lubin, was up 10%. Bit Digital, which last month exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans, gained 7%.

Bitmine, a bitcoin mining company, recently initiated a buying strategy around ether and appointed market strategist Tom Lee of Fundstrat as chairman of its board to help make it the MicroStrategy of ether.

The current wave of interest in Ethereum and related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle's IPO and renewed optimism that the Senate's proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act, could advance through the House this week.

The price of ether itself also continued its rally, up more than 4% Wednesday. The coin has doubled in price in the past three months.

Thiel is a venture capitalist and hedge fund manager best known as a cofounder of both PayPal and Palantir and an early investor in Facebook. Founders Fund was an investor in Tagomi, the crypto brokerage acquired by Coinbase in 2020, and Polymarket, the prediction market built on Ethereum.

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