저자: TomLee · 외국인
요약 보기
톰 리는 이더리움이 스테이블코인·토큰화 금융·AI 에이전트 확산으로 장기 슈퍼사이클에 진입했다고 주장한다. 이더리움은 중립적 퍼블릭 체인으로 월가가 채택할 기반이며, 기관 보유(10%까지도 분산 주주 구조로 탈중앙 강화)는 문제없다고 본다. 올해 말 비트코인 20만~25만달러 전망, 이에 따른 ETH 1만~1.2만달러를 제시하고, 장기적으로 비트코인 네트워크 가치 수준인 약 6만달러를 목표로 한다.
다듬은 글
Tom Lee has nailed some of the biggest trades of the last decade. He told clients to buy Bitcoin when it was still under $1,000. That call made fortunes. Now, he's saying something even bolder. Ethereum isn't just another altcoin. It's the backbone of a financial supercycle that could outlast Bitcoin itself.
In this breakdown, we'll unpack Tom's thesis, why Bitmain is buying billions in Ethereum, how tokenized finance changes everything, and why he believes Ethereum could hit $60,000 in the years ahead. But before we continue, if you enjoy deep dives like this, make sure to check out our free daily email, Crypto Nutshell.
Tens of thousands of investors already rely on it every morning for the biggest stories, . Now, let's get into the video. Before getting to price targets, you have to understand the worldview behind them. Tom isn't just bullish on Ethereum. He believes we're entering a 15-year supercycle, the kind of structural shift that only happens a few times a century.
In his view, Ethereum is the quiet backbone of the next financial system, the same way TCP powered the internet long before anyone cared what those letters meant. You guys are now above 2% of all of the outstanding ETH. The question is, what about Ethereum was it that kind of made you so convinced that this is where I know I know you've talked about stablecoins being the ChatGPT moment of Ethereum, but what was it that jumped out?
Uh in our view, Ethereum probably is a chain that had become underestimated. You know, it made its all-time high 5 years ago. Uh so, when we started the treasury strategy, Ethereum was around 1,300, and and its all-time high was around 4,800. But that was a a case in our minds where Ethereum's fundamental story was much stronger cuz number one, it is the second largest blockchain.
It's the largest smart contract platform. It has a huge community of developers that, in my opinion, are really benevolent folks. You know, Ethereum is trying to improve the world. Um but I think people thought of it as uh less exciting than other platforms. Um but then along comes not only stablecoins, which you know, we call the ChatGPT moment for crypto, but it's really the realization that this current administration in the US, the White House and Congress, are really becoming pro-crypto, and Wall Street itself is embracing blockchains.
And the blockchain they're doing most of the work on is Ethereum. So, uh when I look at that combined with AI, and you know, tokenized uh agentic AI and robots are really going to create the need for a like a token economy for robots. A lot of that will happen on Ethereum. In fact, President Trump today just talked about how he needs proof of human um to protect us, and a lot of that work is going to be done on Ethereum.
So, you have two drivers for what we think are a supercycle. So, to us, at 1,300, Ethereum was kind of like a massive risk-reward. After crossing $10 billion in Ethereum within just 10 weeks, Tom explains why he thinks Ethereum is still deeply underestimated. Its fundamentals are stronger than ever, a massive developer base, a neutral foundation, and real-world adoption from corporations, banks, and now governments.
He highlights two catalysts driving the next phase: stablecoins, what he calls Ethereum's ChatGPT moment, when the use case becomes undeniable, and tokenized AI agents and real-world assets, where robots, contracts, and capital will all speak the same digital language. In other words, he's not talking about another 4-year crypto cycle.
He's talking about a technological revolution that could run for a decade or more. The internet had its moment in the '90s when data went global. Ethereum's moment is when value does the same thing. But why Ethereum? Why not one of the newer, faster chains? Tom says most people are missing the most important mechanic in the entire crypto economy, the fat protocol effect.
When value is built on top of a blockchain, stablecoins, tokenized assets, or credit systems, it's the base layer that captures the economic energy of that activity. But I do think the idea of a fat protocol is important for people to keep in mind. That's what Union Square Ventures first wrote about.
I don't know if you guys remember from 2011 or 2013, but as stablecoins are created on a layer one, that layer one captures the value. It that payment rail concept is the exact same reason banks you know, as you put a deposit in, the the value the company actually equals your deposits cuz they make a loan with that deposit.
So, I I think in in many ways uh there'll be room for for many blockchains, but the majority of this is is taking place on Ethereum. I'm glad you mentioned that, too, cuz I think it's something that people overlook when it comes to choosing a chain. I myself, when we're tokenizing, so you're talking about equity, we're working on tokenizing the equity value of creators, essentially tokenize creator offerings, and we did that on Ethereum because there are trust assumptions in terms of what Ethereum's done, the hard work of decentralizing over a few years.
Now, we're seeing a lot of banks, institutions, you said Wall Street has to make the same calls, and I'm curious to get your take on what that looks like in terms of the tradeoffs in choosing some other chain versus Ethereum and what you're seeing. Yes, and I'm not going to throw shade at any other layer ones because I do think there's room for multiple, but um Ethereum is a truly neutral chain.
Um I don't think anyone ever feels that someone's got a fat finger uh tilting it in their favor. If you think about how Wall Street operates, um they will only want to do and operate on a neutral chain. Um if one of the banks creates their own layer one, calling it, I don't know, you know, too big to fail bank layer one blockchain, no one is going to feel that's a neutral blockchain because that's going to always tilt it in their favor.
I mean, that's just how Wall Street operates today. You know, if a bank is the axe trading a bond, they have perfect information, and they use that against anyone else that trades it. So, I think it's important for uh Wall Street to find a public blockchain that's neutral, and today the biggest one is Ethereum.
He compares Ethereum to the banking system itself. When you deposit cash into a bank, the bank becomes more valuable because it can lend against that deposit. Ethereum works the same way. Every token, every transaction, every new market built on top compounds the value of the network underneath. That's why Wall Street, fintechs, and even regulators are quietly aligning with Ethereum.
It's not the fastest chain, but it's the most neutral, the most trusted, and the most decentralized. To traditional finance, that neutrality matters more than anything. As Tom puts it, no one on Wall Street will ever build on a blockchain owned by a single institution. They need a public, permissionless base layer that nobody can manipulate, and that's Ethereum.
It's becoming the default settlement layer for tokenized finance, not because of hype, but because the world's largest financial systems need a neutral foundation. Every new asset tokenized on Ethereum adds weight to the network, and that compounding effect is what Tom calls the foundation of the supercycle.
Here's where Tom's thinking gets really interesting. Most people assumed Bitmain is trying to be the MicroStrategy of Ethereum, but Tom says that's completely wrong and actually misses the point. I think we agree Bitcoin and Ethereum, first of all, are friends. We don't compete. Um but that our strategy is very different.
You know, I'm not trying to I'm not competing. Bitmain is not trying to get an institution to buy us over MicroStrategy. In fact, we think an institution that owns MicroStrategy also has to own Bitmain because we are different parts of the crypto economy. Ethereum to me is the new Wall Street. You know, in 1971, the dollar went off the gold standard.
Okay? Now, everyone thought in 1971, the play was gold. But actually, in 1971, the dollar became synthetic. It no longer was backed by anything, and that's when Wall Street stepped in and said, "Okay, we got to make sure that the euro or well, you didn't get the German franc or whatever German mark or the French franc doesn't become dominant.
So, Wall Street built products to make sure everyone used a synthetic dollar. Wall Street was the big play in 1971. In 2025, we're making everything synthetic. We're starting with tokenizing the dollar, and then, as you know, Wall Street's going to tokenize equities and everything I just listed. Massive opportunity.
Ethereum is in a supercycle because of that, but Bitmain can play a role cuz it can become a payment rails. It could become almost a bank. Uh it can help as by owning, you know, the largest holder of Ethereum today, it's a kingmaker on the DeFi. Uh we were doing moonshots. We invested $20 into A Co, which is investing in the Worldcoin, and that already, in just less than 10 days, has already returned more than 10 times our investment.
So, I think we are becoming a financial infrastructure company. He makes a simple comparison. If Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is the new Wall Street. MicroStrategy built its empire on Bitcoin, the pristine collateral layer. Bitmain is building on Ethereum, the financial layer that sits above it, where lending, payments, and DeFi rails all live.
He even compares this moment to 1971, when the US went off the gold standard. Everyone thought the trade was gold, but the real winners were on Wall Street, the institutions that built the new synthetic dollar system around it. Today, we're watching that process repeat. Everything is being tokenized: dollars, treasuries, equities, even intellectual property.
And just like 1971, it's the financial engineers who capture the upside. Ethereum is the platform they're building on. That's why Tom calls it the biggest play since 1971, because it's the next evolution of global finance. Now, there's a big fear that's been floating around that corporate treasuries like Bitmain could make Ethereum less decentralized.
Tom completely flips that argument on its head. I've actually spoken to some researchers about this. Like, what's too much concentration? Um 5% is where you get a power law benefit, not that um you know, it starts to break down. Um these same researchers have actually told us that it's pretty safe to go to 10% of Ethereum.
And uh as you know, Ethereum no one controls it. I mean, if some entity owned 10%, uh and it of course that entity is a permanent capital vehicle, and is going to be staking, and doesn't want to get slashed, you know, so they're going to make sure they're validating properly. I'd actually think it really secures the network because now all of a sudden you, you know, a a DApp, by the way, is completely decentralized, right?
It's owned by shareholders. Like Bitmain has 270,000 shareholders. That's actually who controls Bitmain. It's not centralized. I mean, it is actually, I'd argue, a way to ensure perpetual decentralization because now the shareholders own Bitmain, they control how the stock does, and you know, and if the stock's valuation gets weak, Yeah.
then the DApp loses its ability to, you know, raise capital. So, it's truly decentralized. He explains that even if a digital asset treasury owned 10% of Ethereum, it wouldn't centralize the network. It would actually strengthen it. Here's why. Those holdings are spread across hundreds of thousands of shareholders.
They're professionally staked, permanently held, and incentivized to secure the network rather than exploit it. In Tom's view, Bitmain doesn't weaken Ethereum, it fortifies it. It introduces corporate governance, transparency, and responsible validation, all while keeping control distributed among shareholders.
He calls it institutional reinforcement, not institutional capture. And that's the nuance most people miss. Ethereum doesn't need protection from institutions, it needs institutions that play by crypto's rules, open, verifiable, and on chain. That's how Bitmain turns corporate capital into decentralized strength.
Of course, the question everyone wants answered. Where does Tom think this all leads? So, talk to me about where you get to. I think last time it was 10K, now you've already up that, I think. But, how do you see this all playing out? Where does ETH go even at the end of the year? Um well, a lot of it starts with uh our views on crypto.
And, you know, I'm still bullish on Bitcoin. In the fourth quarter, seasonally Bitcoin strong. But, now we have the Fed flipping dovish after being essentially hawkish all year. That's a tailwind for Bitcoin. So, I think Bitcoin gets to 200 to 250,000 by the end of the year. And that aligns with Mark Newton's technical targets.
Ethereum as a price ratio to Bitcoin should recover to its prior, let's say, either average, or at least five-year highs. Okay. Using a $250,000 Bitcoin, that implies somewhere between 10 and 12,000 for Ethereum by the end of the year. But, uh I do think Ethereum is going to exceed those prior highs, and that's why I think when we get to 12, 15,000, that's what you call, you know, real price discovery, but I don't think that would be the ceiling for Ethereum.
Well, I mean, I guess the the last question would be around if it's not the ceiling. Uh we just celebrated 10 years of Ethereum. Uh looking out five years, you've been right, like I said at the open of this, in kind of the most panicked of times, whether it was COVID or when tariffs hit earlier this year, you've always kind of said, "Hey, cooler heads will prevail." I'm not saying that it's going to be straight shot in the next five years, but how do you kind of see it getting there?
Yeah. Uh some perspective, you know, in 2017 Bitcoin was under a thousand, and we thought it would get to 25,000 by 2022, but could get to 100,000 a little bit later. Of course, you know, eight years later Bitcoin's over 100,000. Uh to us, an intermediate level for Ethereum is matching Bitcoin's network value.
So, I think couple years from now, so that would be 60,000 ETH. Tom's price targets are as bold as ever. He sees Bitcoin reaching 200,000 to 250,000 by the end of this year. And based on historical ratios, that puts Ethereum between $10,000 and $12,000 in the short term. But, that's just the warm-up.
Long term, he believes Ethereum will match Bitcoin's network value, which implies a price of around $60,000 per Ethereum. That's not a meme number, it's valuation logic. Ethereum earns yield, powers real-world assets, and now forms the backbone of tokenized credit systems. As he puts it, the real price discovery starts around $15,000.
After that, we're in uncharted territory, the kind of exponential phase that only happens once a generation. Tom Lee isn't describing another hype cycle. He's mapping the next financial era, where Bitcoin anchors the system and Ethereum builds it. Bitmain's accumulation isn't a side play, it's a signal that the next Wall Street won't be built in Manhattan, it'll be built on chain.
Every prior revolution in finance looked messy at the start. In 1971, few people understood the gold standard shift. In 1995, few understood the internet. And in 2025, most still underestimate Ethereum. But, the pattern's the same. Chaos first, clarity later. For those paying attention now, the window for accumulation is still open, but it won't stay that way for long.
If this breakdown helped you see the bigger picture, hit the subscribe button below. . See you all in the next one.
Comments 0