Tom Lee Explains Why Ethereum Can Reach $60,000

After building his reputation as one of the most accurate forecasters in traditional markets, Tom Lee is now making one of his boldest calls yet — from inside crypto.

The longtime Head of Research at Fundstrat turned Chairman at BitMine Immersion Technologies, isn’t just bullish on Ethereum. He’s positioning BitMine to become one the ecosystem's most dominant players. “Ethereum, to me, is the new Wall Street,” Lee told me onstage at Korea Blockchain Week.

BitMine has quickly become Ethereum's largest digital asset treasury company, amassing over 2% of all outstanding ETH — or more than $11 billion worth — in just ten weeks. BitMine’s public ambition is to reach 5% of all ETH and potentially grow beyond that without threatening Ethereum’s decentralization. “These same researchers have actually told us that it's pretty safe to go to 10% of Ethereum,” Lee said.

Lee has been publishing crypto research since 2017, when Bitcoin was still under $1,000. Back then, he predicted institutional investors would want exposure to BTC as “digital gold.” Now, with the foundation of that thesis largely accepted on Wall Street, he’s shifted his focus — and capital — to leading in unlocking Ethereum's potential.

At the core of Lee's bet is a belief that Ethereum is at the start of a supercycle that could span a decade or longer. “We started to see the possibility that Ethereum was entering a supercycle,” he said, “something that would last 10 to 15 years.” But that call goes beyond mere price speculation. It’s about Ethereum’s role in the future of tokenized finance, AI agents, and even geopolitics.

“Robots are really going to create the need for like a token economy for robots. A lot of that will happen on Ethereum,” he said. “In fact, President Trump today just talked about how he needs proof-of-human... and a lot of that work is going to be done on Ethereum.”

Case in point: BitMine isn’t just buying ETH — it’s building necessary financial infrastructure around it. The firm has already deployed $20 million into a Worldcoin digital asset treasury, Eightco Holdings, to also have a stake in growing proof-of-humanity on the blockchain. BitMine is also exploring new ways to start to leverage its power as one of the largest holders of ETH as “almost a bank.” In his words: “We are becoming a financial infrastructure company.”

Of course, BitMine isn’t the only ETH treasury looking to build a large position. Other digital asset treasuries (or “DATs”) like FG Nexus have emerged with their own ambitions. But Lee thinks only a few will survive.

“Whether you're looking at social media or chips or gaming or media or clothing, consumers and investors probably only want to have 2 to 3 things that they consider differentiated stories,” he said. “In the digital asset treasury world, that’s going to be pretty true."

So far, the market appears to agree. Lee points out BitMine trades about $3 billion in volume per day — comparable to the volume of JP Morgan or very nearly that of Coinbase itself — and now accounts for roughly 90% of total DAT trading volume alongside MicroStrategy. “Institutions really only want to buy us,” he said.

For now, there is still plenty of competition in acquiring Ethereum. That buy pressure and historical modeling of Bitcoin's rise in prior cycles has Lee predicting that Ethereum could spike as high as $12,000 into year-end.

"Using a $250,000 Bitcoin, that implies somewhere between $10,000 and $12,000 for Ethereum by the end of the year," he said. "But, I do think Ethereum is going to exceed those prior highs."

Over the years to come after, Lee believes that it's fair to begin using Bitcoin’s network value as a benchmark. "An intermediate level for Ethereum is matching Bitcoin's network value... that would be $60,000 ETH.”

To be clear, it’s an audacious forecast. But Tom Lee has been right more often than not. And considering the success of the same bet on Bitcoin by Michael Saylor and Strategy, it's not surprising to see Lee look to replicate the magic with BMNR.

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