Tom Lee, co-founder of Funstrat, said Ethereum could become the cryptocurrency market leader in the near term, with Wall Street’s push for tokenization and growing expectations for smart contract platform growth, and the company aims to reach $12,000 by January. In an interview with Tom Nash published on November 10, Lee emphasized that while Bitcoin remains under-represented, “we’re going to see a lot more movement in Ethereum” in the coming weeks as capital is reallocated towards rails that power stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Why Ethereum is poised to rise soon
Lee anchored his phone It is a combination of technical and fundamental factors. “Mark Newton (…) thinks it could be somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000 by January, and I think that’s about right. I think Ethereum (…) will more than double between now and the end of the year, or between now and January,” he said, quoting FanStrat’s head of technology strategy. At the same time, he said Bitcoin could reach “the low $100,000s, maybe $200,000 by the end of the year,” and reiterated that Ethereum likely has more upside potential in the short term.
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As Lee explained, the core of Ethereum’s theory is that the demand side of cryptocurrencies is moving towards applications that rely on smart contracts, which is exactly where Ethereum is most entrenched.
“flat Cathie Wood writes about it. She believes that stablecoins are cannibalizing demand for Bitcoin and gold, and that tokenized gold is cannibalizing demand for Bitcoin. But stablecoins and tokenized gold run on smart contract blockchains like Ethereum,” he said, adding, “Wall Street larry fink (…) We want to tokenize everything on the blockchain. In other words, Ethereum is starting to raise people’s growth expectations. ”
Mr. Lee argued that this change in growth expectations is as important, if not more important, than major monetary policy in the short term. While recognizing that The Fed remains an important backdropHe expressed the view that the possibility of monetary easing in December could be a catalyst for a wide range of risk assets, including financials, small-cap stocks, and high-tech, as well as for cryptocurrencies due to correlation. “A rate cut in December would confirm that we are in an easing cycle,” he said, calling it “very bullish” for stocks, which are most closely tied to growth and liquidity. In Lee’s framework, these same flows support the year-end positioning of cryptoassets, specifically Ethereum.
The fund manager also placed the crypto launch within a larger “supercycle” that he has been planning for years. He argues that the market is still in the early stages of an AI-driven capital investment boom and demographic trends that will continue to drive demand for productivity technologies. Against this backdrop, he said, bears have repeatedly misbehaved by clinging to inverted yield policies and analogues of 1970s inflation.
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“It’s hard for people to understand and grasp the supercycle (…) We’re looking for a story arc that lasts 10 to 15 years,” he said, arguing that the past three years have revealed “a ton of misconceptions” about the recession and persistent inflation, which in no way match the reported returns.
macro background
Pressed on the risks of the meeting, Mr. Lee downplayed the idea that inflation was about to pick up again, arguing that oil prices would need to approach $200 to deliver a real growth shock to U.S. households. “The most overestimated risk is that inflation is coming back,” he said, pointing to cooling housing and labor indicators and saying recent claims that core services inflation is reheating are “completely false” when compared to the PCE series.
On policy path dependence, he suggested that even if Powell holds off in December, political pressure for a change in leadership will likely accelerate, weakening the medium-term impact on risk assets.
In terms of timing, Lee believes positioning will be a short-term accelerator. He argued that financial institutions remain underperforming their benchmarks even after the bull market cycle from 2023 to 2025, and are often forced to chase better-performing segments in the final weeks of the year. “There is incredible demand for stocks because people are really offside (…) 80% have underperformed the benchmark this year (…) they will buy stocks,” he said, adding that AI trading “will come back strong” and that cryptocurrencies tend to correlate with that movement.
Especially in the case of Ethereum, Lee’s case comes down to a simple throughline. The pipe being built is where the next growth stage will occur. Stablecoins, tokenized gold, and Wall Street’s broader tokenization plans are traffic running on programmable blockchains. He says the market is just starting to price that in. “The higher the growth expectations, the higher the discount for the future,” Lee said, explaining why he believes ETH could “make a big move towards the end of the year” and reach the $9,000 to $12,000 range by January.
At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $3,447.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart on TradingView.com
