HONG KONG – Thomas Lee, chairman of ether Financial company BitMine Immersion (BMRN), said the next generation major financial institution may not come from Wall Street, but from YouTube.
Speaking on stage at Consensus Hong Kong on Wednesday, Lee argued that MrBeast’s move into banking could position the video creator as the primary financial platform for Gen Z and Gen Alpha and a major push into crypto.
MrBeast’s company, in which BitMine invested $200 million, agreed earlier this month to buy neobank Step as a long-term play on how younger generations will access financial services.
“Beast has a chance to be the financial institution of their generation,” Lee said.
He compared the opportunity to how Charles Schwab served baby boomers, BlackRock and Blackstone attracted the capital of Generation X and Robinhood captured Millennials.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha, he noted, represent about 120 million people in the US alone, and MrBeast has built an audience of more than a billion followers globally.
“These customers are not necessarily wealthy today,” Lee said, but over the next decade they will participate in a major wealth transfer.
If Step becomes their primary financial platform, he argued, it could place BitMine and investment in MrBeast’s company at the center of a generation that views digital assets as intrinsic to its economic life.
