Recently, I noticed a pretty interesting market phenomenon — veteran Wall Street strategist Tom Lee is going all in on Ethereum, and his moves are worth paying close attention to.

When it comes to Tom Lee, many people may not be very familiar with his background. This guy has spent more than thirty years in Wall Street, starting at Kidder Peabody in the 90s, and later serving as JPMorgan’s chief equity strategist for 7 years. What is he most famous for? He sticks to data-driven analysis and never gets spooked by market pressure. Do you remember the time in 2002 when he went after Nextel? He directly questioned the company’s financial data, and as a result the stock dropped 8% that day. The company’s executives even called JPMorgan to complain. But in the end, the investigation confirmed he was completely right — and he became a model of independent analysis.

This guy later founded Fundstrat, and that’s when he truly started to focus on Bitcoin. In 2017, he released a report that, for the first time, incorporated Bitcoin into mainstream valuation models, saying at the time that BTC could replace part of gold reserves. Back then, many people dismissed it as crazy, but looking back now, his thinking was actually quite forward-looking.

Now, Tom Lee is even more all in on Ethereum. Recently, he became chairman of BitMine. The company is in the process of transitioning into an ETH reserve firm. As of the latest information, BitMine has already accumulated more than 560,000 ETH, with a market value of over $2 billion — nearly 8 times the amount during PIPE financing. I heard that Founders Fund and ARK have also followed suit, which suggests institutional investors are starting to recognize this approach.

In a recent interview, Tom Lee specifically emphasized the importance of stablecoins. He said stablecoins are like ChatGPT in the crypto space — at this moment, stablecoins’ total market cap has already exceeded $250 billion. More than 50% of issuance and 30% of Gas fees are on Ethereum. He believes Ethereum is becoming key infrastructure connecting traditional finance with crypto, especially in the direction of RWA tokenization.

From a financial modeling perspective, Tom Lee outlined five advantages of a company structure like BitMine versus ETFs or on-chain custody: it can obtain ETH at low cost through issuing additional shares; it can hedge volatility with convertible bonds and options; it can boost NAV by acquiring other finance-related companies; it can expand ETH staking and DeFi yields; and most importantly, once it becomes a key node in the ecosystem, it could evolve into a strategic asset that financial institutions compete to acquire.

He also specifically mentioned that Robinhood is rolling out tokenized stocks on Layer 2, and he believes more and more institutions will adopt compliant and scalable blockchain solutions. And right now, Ethereum is the only mainstream public chain that simultaneously satisfies regulatory requirements, has a mature ecosystem, and benefits from economies of scale.

Fundstrat’s analysis team set a short-term target for ETH at $4,000, believing that by the end of the year its fair value could be in the range of $10,000 to $15,000. Tom Lee himself said that buying ETH at the current price is an effective path for enterprises to potentially capture 10x upside.

Honestly, looking at this whole series of moves by Tom Lee, he isn’t just hyping concepts — he’s laying out a systematic strategy. From a data-driven analyst on Wall Street, to an early advocate of Bitcoin, to now going all in on the Ethereum ecosystem, this guy’s chain of logic is actually very clear. Stablecoins, RWA, compliance — they all point to the same direction. If you’re interested, you can go check the market trends of related assets on Gate, especially ETH at this level.