Tom Lee is a renowned expert in analyzing financial markets, including the cryptocurrency market, and is a permabull when it comes to digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This year, his bullish stance for the second-largest cryptocurrency has seen a significant increase. Bitmine, where Lee is the chairman, has been steadily accumulating ETH, adding it to its balance sheet.
Earlier this week, Lee took to the X social media platform to make an extremely bullish prediction, stating that he expects Ethereum to enter a super cycle similar to the one initiated by Bitcoin in 2017.
Tom Lee’s ultra-bullish ETH statement
The bullish statement made by Tom Lee earlier this week about Ethereum has stirred the crypto market since it reflects one of the most powerful and bullish narratives here. It is about the idea that a major crypto asset can surge in price by entering a structural and multi-year phase of expansion, even if the market sentiment seems to be dented at the moment.
In his statement, Lee referred to the bellwether crypto, Bitcoin, which traded at around $1,000 in early 2017. The coin’s market cap back then was small, BTC faced a lot of doubts and criticism, and waves of fear kept hitting the market. However, by the end of the year, its price exploded as high as $20,000, entering a multi-year bullish phase. Lee argues that what is happening to Ethereum now is mirroring Bitcoin’s situation eight years ago, and ETH is facing a lot of fear, doubts, and uncertainty. Still, both retail and institutional investors are performing long-term accumulation, adding ETH to their balance sheets. Besides, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have been acknowledged by Wall Street – spot ETFs were launched in January 2024.
Lee seems to believe that Ethereum is demonstrating a structural resemblance to Bitcoin today. This includes deep price corrections, increasing adoption and usage, and slow but firm improvement of the infrastructure. Another important factor here is a fast-expanding pool of long-term holders who consider each price correction as a chance to buy the dip. Lee reminded the community that his company, Fundstrat, first began to recommend its clients to invest in Bitcoin (by allocating 1-2% into it) in 2017, when it was worth around $1,000 per coin. Since that time, he said, BTC has had six declines of more than 50% and three declines of more than 75%.
Therefore, Lee believes that currently Ethereum is facing a transitional phase, expecting large price breakouts in the short-term. However, a major bullish ETH prediction made by Lee in September for this year has failed to come true – Ethereum did not reach $5,500 in the middle of October.
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Bitcoin and Ethereum prices collapse
Once again this week, Bitcoin has plunged below the psychological level of $90,000 briefly. Ethereum followed it with a drop below $3,000. By now, Bitcoin has recovered to the $91,600 range, and ETH is back above $3,000 now. BTC is operating as the leader of the crypto narrative, which always either pulls the rest of the market up or down. As it collapsed under $90,000, the market saw a wave of liquidations over $1 billion. Ethereum followed suit.
The massive drawdown (the loss of the $105,000 level over the past week by Bitcoin) was triggered by a wide range of factors, where the major one being the current situation between the US and Venezuela, where Donald Trump is considering military action. This drove global economic and geopolitical uncertainty high, causing deep fear in financial markets. Traders have been disposing of risk-on assets, including crypto, and pouring funds into gold. The prices are reacting, correspondingly, dropping along with liquidity.
Still, the fact of the quick recovery of both cryptos suggests that the strong underlying demand remains. Spot ETFs continue to receive large inflows, even though much smaller than those seen earlier this year. The latter proves that the institutional support remains strong as well.
Besides, the supply across crypto exchanges is dropping again, showing that retail investors are also taking this opportunity to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum dips. The two largest treasury companies – Strategy and Metaplanet – keep accumulating Bitcoin, and the aforementioned Bitmine continues stocking up on Ethereum, reaffirming their long-term bets on these leading digital assets.
Still, according to Lee, if Ethereum is indeed about to start a winning trajectory similar to that of Bitcoin, it is likely to face multiple declines and high volatility in the near future. Besides, Lee focuses on Ethereum’s central role as a platform for decentralized financial apps, asset tokenization, stablecoins, etc. Many leading stablecoins are already running on Ethereum, including USDT, RLUSD, and USDC.
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