Morning Minute: Tom Lee supports Mr. Beast with $200 million

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto majors are red and cooling; BTC at $95,400
• Tom Lee’s BMNR invests $200 million in equity in Mr. Beast
• X cracks down on InfoFi, KAITO drops 20%
• Saturn announced an 11% return on its USDat stablecoin through Strategy’s STRC
• GAS Token Surges 700% to $44 Million as Trenches Show Strong Signs of Life

💰 BitMine backs MrBeast’s financial platform with a $200 million investment

A surprising new investment contrasts the face of Ethereum with the face of all content.

📌What happened

BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) has announced a $200 million investment in the financial platform initiative led by YouTube creator MrBeast.

BitMine supports the platform’s broader vision to offer on-chain financial products, including DeFi integrations tied to BitMine’s Ethereum treasury and MrBeast’s massive user base (over 200 million subscribers).

Key data points:

• BitMine’s treasury already owns 4.16 million ETH, on track to own 5% of the ETH supply and by far the largest ETH DAT
• The $200 million commitment marks one of the largest-ever publicly traded investments by a publicly traded crypto company in a consumer fintech/creator economy project
• MrBeast’s platform aims to combine traditional financial instruments with crypto rails, leveraging BitMine’s infrastructure and liquidity.

The investment news coincided with broader momentum for BitMine’s 2026 public story, fueled by ETH’s +12% start to the year.

🗣️ What they say

Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold said the company would explore ways to “integrate DeFi into our upcoming financial services platform”

🧠Why it matters

This investment is notable for a number of reasons.

Firstly, this is the first time we see a crypto DAT using its capital for a meaningful investment outside of crypto tokens.

Most DATs simply raise capital and buy their respective token (i.e. BMNR and ETH), and if the holders are lucky, the team will get some extra ROI from the proceeds.

Tom and team are taking a different route by using growth capital to place ‘moonshot’ bets. And that makes BMNR a much more interesting bet than some of the other DATs out there (you get the ETH upside + the moonshot upside).

This is also significant for potential mainstream adoption.

MrBeast’s platform is massive and its new finance-focused app is a perfect opportunity to get into retail crypto finance.

Overall, this feels like an important statement from Tom Lee: BMNR is going on the attack and not just playing defense in 2026.

Now we’ll see if anyone chooses to follow suit…

🌎 Macrocrypto and markets

A few headlines that stood out:

• Crypto majors are red; BTC -1% at $95,400; ETH -1% at $3,310, SOL -1% at $144; XRP -2% to $2.06
• DASH (+6%), SKY (+4%) and CHZ (+4%) led the top gainers
• The CEO of Bank of America said interest-bearing stablecoins could raise up to $6 trillion from bank deposits, which would form part of the bill’s debate in the Senate.
• The Manhattan D.A pushed for stronger crypto enforcement laws and pushed for tougher penalties for scams targeting vulnerable populations
• Two solo Bitcoin miners each won nearly $300,000 in rare block rewards amid the changing mining dynamics
• Ripple has entered into a $150 million financing agreement with LMAX Group to accelerate the adoption of RLUSD at institutional trading desks
• Interactive real estate agents announced 24/7 account financing powered by USDC

In corporate bonds/ETFs

• The BTC ETFs saw $100 million in net inflows on Thursday; ETH ETFs saw net inflows of $164 million
• BMNR announced a $200 million investment in YouTuber MrBeast’s financial platform company

In Memes / Onchain movers

• Meme majors were red again; Doge -4%, Shiba -2%, PEPE -1%, TRUMP -1%, Bonk +1%, Pengu -4%, SPX -5%, WIF -3% and Fartcoin -3%
• GAS rose 700% to $42 million and led all movers; TERRA +51x to $4 million, Ralph +400% to $30 million and SOL (+70%) to $20 million

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

• Kaito’s mark fell sharply on Thursday after Nikita Bier introduced a new policy that cut off API access to InfoFi projects
• Ondo announced a partnership with Felix for tokenized stocks and ETFs on Hyperliquid, along with loans
• Saturn announced $800,000 funding from Yzi Labs, with an 11% return on its USDat stablecoin via STRC
• Football point Fun’s FUN token holds a FDV of $112 million a day after TGE
• FOGO trading at $415 million fdv on day one after TGE

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were very green that day; Punks +1% at 29.2 ETH, Pudgy +6% at 5.43 ETH and BAYC +10% at 6.5 ETH; Hypurr -1% 505 HYPE
• Kruipz (+18%) led notable top gainers
• Pudgy penguins announced a partnership with Manchester City