Tom Lee, the founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors and chairman of Bitmine (BMNR 2.42%), is fiercely bullish on cryptocurrencies. He told investors to buy Bitcoin (BTC +0.03%) in 2017, when it was still trading at about $2,600, and claimed it could hit $20,000-$50,000 by 2022. Bitcoin reached $20,000 just a few months later and now trades at about $64,000.
Lee was initially less bullish on Ethereum (ETH 0.92%), but he began recommending it in late 2024. After being appointed as Bitmine’s chairman last June, Lee had the company build its own Ethereum Treasury. Today, Bitmine holds 5.54 million Ether tokens, or 4.6% of its circulating supply, making it the world’s largest corporate holder of Ethereum.
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The price of Ether has actually declined about 50% since the last day of 2024. However, Lee expects Ether to soar to $22,000 within the next few years and $62,000-$250,000 over the long term. The high-end of that forecast would represent a 14,870% gain from its current price. Let’s see why Lee is so bullish on Ether — and if it can replicate Bitcoin’s massive gains.
What sets Ethereum apart from Bitcoin?
Ethereum was once mined with the same energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism as Bitcoin. But in 2022, it transitioned its blockchain to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in a network upgrade dubbed “The Merge”.
Today’s Change
(-0.92%) $-15.49
Current Price
$1666.21
Key Data Points
Market Cap
$201B
Day’s Range
$1651.01 – $1688.08
52wk Range
$1512.07 – $4946.05
Volume
9.8B
After that upgrade, Ether could no longer be mined. However, it gained support for smart contracts, which are used to develop decentralized apps, and staking, which allows investors to lock up their tokens on the blockchain to earn interest-like rewards. It’s now the largest blockchain-based developer ecosystem with nearly 32,000 active developers as of late 2025.
Ethereum’s Layer-1 (L1) blockchain isn’t as fast as newer PoS blockchains like Solana (SOL 0.42%), but it’s keeping up with its new Layer-2 (L1) rollups — which bundle together multiple transactions and process them off-chain at higher speeds. It will also improve its scalability, reduce network congestion and gas fees, and increase its overall efficiency through three major upgrades — The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge — over the next decade.
While Bitcoin is valued by its scarcity and as a hedge against expansionary monetary policies, Ether is valued by the growth of Ethereum’s developer ecosystem. As it gains more developers, the value of Ether — which funds the gas fees on its network — will continue to rise.
What does Lee expect to happen to Ether?
Lee’s core price target for Ether, $22,000, is directly pegged to his $250,000 forecast for Bitcoin. He expects the broader institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies, especially “blue chip” tokens like Bitcoin and Ether, to support that rally. He also expects Ethereum’s structural role in minting stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) to amplify those gains.
Earlier this year, Lee set a higher long-term target of $62,000 to $250,000 for Ether. Lee believes that as autonomous AI genetics take over more economic transactions, they’ll need public, neutral, and secure blockchains — like Ethereum — to handle identity authentication, validation, and instant machine-to-machine payments.
As that happens, Ethereum’s ecosystem will expand as more decentralized finance and agentic AI applications are developed. As more developers and investors stake their Ether, it could become a viable alternative to other yield-bearing investments.
Is it the right time to buy Ether?
Lee called Ether’s pullback over the past year a “bloodbath buying opportunity”, and Bitmine has been aggressively ramping up its purchases this month. As it rides out the near-term volatility, it’s staking most of its tokens to earn massive yields through its own dedicated staking infrastructure and validator network known as MAVAN (Made-in America VAlidator Network).
It’s impossible to tell where Ether will end up over the next few months. But over the next few years, I believe it could soar higher as it pulls further ahead of the other PoS blockchains. I’m not sure it will ever reach $250,000, but it should outperform other smaller altcoins.
