저자: TomLee · 외국인
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Tom Lee는 1년간의 크립토 겨울이 끝나고 본격적인 강세장에 진입했다고 주장하며, 이번 사이클이 과거보다 훨씬 클 것이라고 말함. 기관의 상품 출시와 토큰화가 핵심 동력이라고 봄. 이더리움은 5년간 2,700달러대 횡보로 크게 저평가되어 있으며, 연말 기준 ETH 5,000달러 이상, BTC 10만 달러 시 ETH 7,500달러, 장기적으로 토큰당 25,000~50,000달러까지 가능하다고 제시. AI 버블 논쟁에서는 현재가 1997년 수준으로 아직 버블 정점은 멀다고 봄.
다듬은 글
The last 12 months have been a grind. It's been a crypto winter, but KBW last week and this week, you can see that it'll change. You know, we are in a full-blown bull market again. This bull cycle is coming at a time when institutions are building a lot of products and I think we're seeing some real innovations.
I mean, like Ando announcing private markets today, that's bigger players, bigger dollars. Uh, I think this is going to be a much much bigger cycle than than what we've seen in the past. I mean, I think people kind of aren't bullish enough. Actually, I think you're going to see some monster moves in crypto prices.
Tom Lee believes the crypto market is entering a phase that could catch even the most optimistic investors offguard. After 12 months of grinding through what he describes as a crypto winter, he now sees a decisive change in market conditions, declaring that we are back in a full-blown bull market. But what makes his outlook particularly striking is his conviction that this cycle could be far more explosive than the previous ones.
According to Lee, investors are underestimating what is coming and the next major moves in cryptocurrency prices could be much bigger than the market currently expects. His predictions for Ethereum alone reveal just how bullish he has become. Lee believes ETH is massively undervalued, arguing that years of price consolidation could set the stage for a dramatic breakout.
He has suggested that Ethereum could reach $7,500 if Bitcoin climbs above $100,000, while his longerterm bull cycle projections go as high as $25 to $50,000 per ETH. These are extraordinary targets. But his thesis rests on something bigger than historical price patterns. He sees institutions building new financial products, tokenization opening enormous pools of capital to blockchain networks, and Ethereum emerging as critical infrastructure for the next generation of financial markets.
If you appreciate in-depth analysis of the forces shaping Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the wider crypto market, take a moment to hit the like button, update. Your support helps us continue bringing you these conversations and breaking down what they could mean for the market. Now, let's get into Tom Lee's analysis.
Bit mine is now 15 months since launch, 15 months into a 10-year business forecast, and we made a big bet on Ethereum because we at the time we thought Ethereum it would be the settlement rail of the future. So we we believed a super cycle was coming for tokenization and crypto and that Ethereum was the the most neutral infrastructure because of the size of the development community.
The actual fact that it's had 100% uptime and in the 15 months I I think it's been tracking. I mean to us Ethereum continues to be the most neutral infrastructure. I think there's a lot of wins that they're posting and the token price is 2700. It's been in the same price for 5 years and as you guys know the longer the base the bigger the breakout.
So I mean part of our thesis is we think Ethereum is massively undervalued and I mean this bull cycle I think it could easily be 25,000 or 50,000 per token. You answered a question that my comm's team wanted to make sure I ask but maybe it's where do you think ETH will be at the end of the year? You know I I think Ethereum should exceed its alltime high.
So I think it's above 5,000. I think Bitcoin is going to be over 100,000 and if that's the case then I think Ethereum is around 7500. And are there indicators you look at in the market like what do you typically look at to inform usage of the infrastructure and have a bit of those those forward views?
Uh I mean I think there's already a lot of I think that I think crypto is a thematic story and what I mean by that is that in 2016 2017 that bull market was really an ICO story but it was principally retail investors but it was huge. I mean it didn't take a lot of people to to cause Bitcoin to hit 18,000.
And then in the 2019 to 2021 bull market that was a lot about NFTTS which was you know a novel innovation but that was again pretty much a retail boom and and you saw massive moves in crypto prices but this bull cycle is coming at a time when institutions are building a lot of products and I think we're seeing some real innovations.
I mean like announcing private markets today that's bigger players bigger dollars. Uh, I think this is going to be a much much bigger cycle than than what we've seen in the past. I mean, I think people kind of aren't bullish enough actually. I think you're going to see some monster moves in crypto prices.
Fast forward 10 years, say we've some been successful in this room. We've reached some tens of trillions of capital on chain. How do you think the financial system has changed? Uh, what will be net new? What will be story of the past? I think just keep in mind the financial system is half of the economy.
So like everything that happens in the real world, you have to have a one unitit equivalent of that as a financial transaction. But in a world of where we're going to have agents and robots, I I think the financial system is actually even bigger. So one thing that we may see in the future is the financial services industry becomes the largest sector in the economy because agents and robots are part of that digital world.
But I think the success for the crypto industry is kind of democratizing access because you know in the US today for instance 46% of Americans don't even have a bank account. the the the debit card, prepaid card is their bank account. I mean, that's a very expensive way for people to store money. Coming back to Ethereum in in a bit of the the thesis of the next cycle, what are some of the risks over the next year that you'd keep an eye out for if you were speaking to to CIO in terms of where we are in the cycle and and how to track?
Well, I think a Tradfi CIO today has an existential question. How many of you guys heard of the company National Cash Register, NCR? They were the giants in the mainframe world. So, in 1980, they controlled like computing, but they didn't make the pivot to personal computers. Okay. How many of you guys heard of MCI?
They were a juggernaut in telecoms because they offered long distance and calling cards and they never made the pivot to mobile and they disappeared. I think a lot of large financial institutions today uh if they don't stand up a crypto rail or a crypto strategy are going to be the NCRs and the MCIs of era.
Tom Lee's Ethereum thesis rests on the belief that the market has yet to fully appreciate the infrastructure being built beneath the next generation of financial services. Through Bitmine, his team made a substantial bet on Ethereum because they believe it can serve as a neutral settlement layer for tokenized assets and a growing range of blockchainbased financial applications.
Lee points to Ethereum's established development community, its reliability, and its position within the ecosystem as reasons to believe that the network could benefit enormously as tokenization expands. He also argues that ETH's prolonged period of price consolidation could precede a significant breakout.
his targets of $7,500 in a scenario where Bitcoin exceeds $100,000 and potentially $25 to $50,000 over the broader bull cycle reflect just how much growth he believes the market could be overlooking. These remain ambitious forecasts, but they illustrate the scale of the opportunity he sees if institutional adoption accelerates.
However, Lee's argument goes well beyond the price of Ethereum. He believes the real transformation will occur as traditional financial assets move onchain and blockchain technology becomes embedded in the global economy. That brings us to the next part of his analysis. Why Lee believes the movement of global wealth onto the blockchain could reshape the financial system itself.
Well, I think incumbent institutions never see disruption. I spent my entire career really focused on disruptors. So in the early 90s I I covered wireless which was a disruptive technology against local telefan and long distance. The telecom operators the money managers of the traditional world didn't understand why there would be disruption.
I think that's the story today. I think banks today tend to think their customers the wealthy ones are older. They want to hold on to their customers. But as you know the future is driven by younger people and and they see a very different world. Foremost the market is I mean it's $200 trillion minimum but it's also growing by about 7 trillion a year.
Okay that's I mean just think about that for a minute. Every year there's another $7 trillion of liquid assets that's looking for a place to invest. So for instance, you know, when you hear about people talk about hyperscalers and AI and they're going to spend a trillion a year where the money comes from, there's already seven trillion dollars of new money waiting to fund.
But I think most wealth, most of this liquid assets, they're controlled by wealthy people that want to protect their capital and they want to have, you know, outperformance of what they earn. So I think part of this sea change really is convincing people that moving this tok onto the blockchain is going to outperform traditional ways of allocating wealth capital.
I think for instance a lot of wealthy people invest in private equity and private credit. Now that's illquid and the returns have actually underperformed. So I think the idea that tens of trillions of dollars has been allocated in funds that take four years, five years, 10 years to pay out and when you get your money back, you probably did about the same as a money market fund.
That's a a very big addressable market. Um but I think a another big sort of obstacle or what needs to change is that you know crypto as an industry needs to look more mature because I think anybody who's even going to do tokenized trading or tokenized equities I think that they need to feel that they're working with partners that their money is secure not going to be hacked and disappear things like managing your private keys um and worrying about thinen and sanctions because your uh tokens got intermixed with sanctioned countries.
So I think there's a lot of little things but I think once those sort of frameworks are established I think things are going to move very quick. I do want to offer some perspective because I've been following markets for 34 years now actually 36 years I'm not sure a long time more than a generation and uh most of my time has been dealing with institutional investors so fund managers professional money manager what you have to keep in mind is that the average age of a fund manager is probably 35 so that means that fund manager probably entered the business in 2016.
Okay, so they only saw the world and by the way in 2016 the fund manager there started his job in 2006. What that means is if someone has experience their look back doesn't cover other bubbles. For instance, the average money manager today wasn't managing money during the GFC and the average money manager today wasn't managing money money during the dot bubble.
So whereas actually I was covering markets that entire period. If you think there's an AI bubble today, foremost, it's a widely held view. I have never seen a bubble when everyone thinks it's a bubble. Okay, think about that for a minute. If you all think it's a bubble, then you're likely to not be pushing things to become a bubble because you all think it's a bubble.
And I think that's why when I look at AI, I think we just have to take some measurements. Jack GBT was launched in 2023. So we're three years into the innovation coming from artificial or super intelligence. The public internet was launched basically in 94. Okay. And that's also when mobile networks being built.
The total buildout of internet and mobile in 2026 was about 35 trillion. The AI infrastructure spend is about 30 trillion. So it cost about the same. Here's the thing. Cisco didn't peak until 2000. Okay? And between 1993 and 2000, Cisco went down 50% twice. So both you had nearly a wipe out twice. And I think we're basically today in 1997.
I I think we're far from a bubble. That being said, another thing to keep in mind, wireless was an S-curve, grew exponentially for 25 years. the stocks peak 10 years into the cycle. So I I think the AI cycle, even if it's 25 years, the bubble is probably around 2033. The bubble peak. Tom Lee's outlook presents a compelling explanation for why he believes this crypto bull market could become much larger than previous cycles.
His argument is not simply that Bitcoin and Ethereum are due for another rally. He sees a fundamental change in the forces driving adoption with established financial institutions beginning to build blockchainbased products and explore new ways to access markets that were once difficult, expensive, or restricted to certain investors.
In earlier cycles, retail enthusiasm and speculative trends played an outsized role in pushing cryptocurrency prices higher. This time, Lee believes institutional capital and the development of entirely new financial infrastructure could create a much broader foundation for growth. If that transition accelerates, the potential scale of the market could look very different from what investors have experienced before.
Ethereum sits at the center of this thesis because Lee believes tokenization could turn blockchain networks into essential infrastructure for global finance. Bringing equities, private market investments, credit, and other financial assets on chain could create new ways to trade, settle transactions, and distribute investment opportunities.
His projections of $25 to $50,000 for ETH reflect the enormous upside he believes is possible if Ethereum captures a meaningful role in that transformation. But the size of the opportunity should not be confused with a guarantee that these targets will be reached. Adoption could take longer than expected.
Regulatory obstacles may persist. competition between blockchain networks remains significant and crypto prices can fall sharply even when the long-term investment thesis appears intact. The question is whether the growth in real world usage and institutional demand will eventually justify the valuations Lee anticipates.
Ultimately, Tom Lee is betting that the next phase of crypto adoption will be driven by a much deeper transformation of the financial system rather than speculation alone. His bullish Bitcoin and Ethereum forecasts are built around that possibility. But the critical question is how quickly institutions will move, how much capital will actually migrate on chain, and which networks will capture the greatest share of that activity.
Do you think Lee is right that this bull cycle could dwarf the previous ones? And is Ethereum genuinely undervalued at current levels, or are his price targets too optimistic? Share your thoughts in the comments below. If you enjoyed this breakdown, hit like, for more in-depth crypto and market analysis. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.
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