Unfazed by the drop! A Wall Street oracle: Ethereum could hit $250k—don’t be bearish at the BTC and ETH bottoms

Wall Street fortune-teller Tom Lee said that AI and the tokenization of assets will drive Ethereum’s transformation, and that Ether could surge to $250,000. His company Bitmine has been making large additional purchases and will be added to the Russell 1,000 index.

While the market is still focused on ETF fund flows and short-term coin price fluctuations, a transformation that could disrupt the global financial system is quietly taking shape. Fundstrat research director and Bitmine (U.S. stock ticker: BMNR) chairman Tom Lee said that Ethereum is undergoing an infrastructure transformation, and that this momentum will ultimately push Ether to $250,000.

Nicknamed the “Wall Street fortune-teller,” Tom Lee recently delivered a keynote speech at the Paris “Proof of Talk” summit, boldly predicting that Ether’s price could rise to $250,000. Although he did not provide a specific timeline, he believes that the structural changes brought by AI and the tokenization of assets will become the core driving force behind Ether entering a brand-new valuation phase.

As of the time of writing, Ether is trading at around $1,851, down 6.7% over the past 24 hours, but for institutional investors, the current volatility is just noise.

Tom Lee: The market is getting the focus wrong; the real catalysts are forming

Bitmine, led by Tom Lee, is now the largest corporate holder of Ether. Just last week, the company kicked off its largest accumulation since last December, snapping up 111,942 Ether at current prices (about $237 million), bringing Bitmine’s total Ether holdings to nearly 5.4 million—accounting for approximately 4.47% of Ether’s circulating supply.

In his remarks, Tom Lee emphasized: “If my reasoning is correct, Ether will break out of its current consolidation range, and the two key factors that break the deadlock are asset tokenization and artificial intelligence (AI).”

“I believe Ether has massive upside potential of more than 50 times. If Ether truly rises to $250,000 as expected, Bitmine’s stock price could climb as high as $5,000. With the current price at $18, it’s practically a bargain.”

Ethereum could become the settlement layer of the machine economy

Tom Lee further analyzed that this growth momentum—potentially worth tens of billions to trillions of dollars—will be driven entirely by AI. As advanced software and automated computation gradually take over the online world, machines will need a payment method that can “settle instantly,” rather than relying on traditional bank wire transfers that are slow and cumbersome. He said:

“Future internet traffic will be dominated by robots. As venture capital giant a16z and other institutions have said, this will be a ‘great unification’ revolution. When you have a massive robot system, you must be able to manage them. When it comes to managing robots’ behavior, blockchain is far more efficient than traditional financial rails. Whether it’s identity verification, permission checks, or payment speed, crypto systems outperform traditional architectures.”

Tom Lee is convinced that under this “machine-to-machine” economic model, Ether will completely shed the label of a “speculative asset” and evolve into the mainstream base currency for paying for global automated computing power.

This kind of systematic growth is fundamentally rewriting the management mechanism of blockchain networks. Tom Lee pointed to a key phenomenon: As a non-profit organization, the “Ethereum Foundation” has been steadily shrinking its influence over the years, and Ether holdings have fallen to a mere 100,000 coins, representing only 0.1% of total supply.

Added to the Russell 1000 index, Bitmine draws institutional capital

Taking its place, large publicly listed companies are taking control of Ethereum in the form of “enterprise-grade validation nodes.” Led by companies such as Bitmine and Sharklink, these businesses currently jointly control as much as 7% of the circulating Ether supply. These companies no longer rely on subsidies from the foundation; supported solely by staking rewards that can generate up to $500 million per year, they can sustain Ethereum ecosystem development on their own.

To demonstrate the explosive potential of this business model, Tom Lee threw out a major bombshell: Bitmine, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is about to see a significant milestone in the capital markets. He noted:

“Bitmine has met the qualification to be included in the Russell 1000 (Russell 1000), and it is expected to take effect on June 26. The Russell 1000 is one of the most widely tracked indices globally. All global fund managers benchmarked to this index—behind which represents a massive pool of hot money totaling up to $4 trillion—will have to decide whether to hold Bitmine.”

Tom Lee explained that owning shares of companies that actively participate in node operations tends to deliver far higher returns than simply buying Ether spot. “Over the past half-year’s base period, the return from simply holding Ether spot is about 22%; but Bitmine, backed by strong staking infrastructure, has generated an astonishing 500% return for investors.”

To Tom Lee, the huge structural growth driven by enterprise staking and AI applications has completely crushed any short-term market panic. In his closing remarks, he summed it up as follows:

“If you’re bearish on the market today, then you’re already admitting defeat at the bottom and selling out. I must emphasize again: to be bearish on Bitcoin or Ether at this moment is to be bearish at the bottom of Bitcoin and Ether.”

• This article is reprinted with permission from: “BlockBeats”
• Original title: “AI and Tokenization Create 50x Upside! Tom Lee Says: Ether Will Soar to $250,000”
• Original author: Block Sister MEL