Tom Lee speaks up: Ethereum is now moving into the “ETH 2.0 phase,” with a target price that could potentially reach as high as $250,000

BitMine Chairman Tom Lee called out a long-term target price for ETH of $250k at WebX 2026, pointing to Ethereum’s entry into an “ETH 2.0” valuation leap-forward phase.
(Background recap: Bitmine bought another 42k ETH last week! Total holdings surpassed 5.74 million ETH, pressing toward the “5% of supply” milestone)
(Additional context: the Ethereum Foundation has dissolved its agreement to support the team, and no one has taken over coordination for core EIP development)

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• Robinhood Chain provides evidence that “ETH is money”
• BitMine’s setup: co-leading two Ethereum Foundation spinoff organizations
• From “altseason” to a “money narrative”: where is Ethereum’s 2.0 logic?

On July 13 in the United States, BitMine Chairman Tom Lee will deliver a speech at WebX 2026, reiterating the core idea of “ETH is money,” and drawing an analogy between Ethereum’s valuation leap from “1.0 to 2.0” using examples including Amazon, Nvidia, and JPMorgan, pointing out that Ethereum is at a similar turning point.

In his talk, Tom Lee said Ethereum’s long-term target price is looking toward $250k. He listed four main drivers: the new foundation era, the Agentic-AI wave, the role of a financial settlement layer, and ETH as money itself.

He also said plainly that current market sentiment has already bottomed out, and that Ethereum is the cure for the “wealth fear valley.” This argument lines up with recent price action: on July 13, ETH briefly fell below $1,800, and BTC also temporarily dipped toward the $63,000 level.

Robinhood Chain provides evidence that “ETH is money”

Earlier the same day, Tom Lee pointed out on X that Robinhood Chain has quickly grown into a phenomenon-level product, with its trading volume surpassing multiple established decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

The key is the architecture design: Robinhood Chain uses ETH as the native gas currency, and all transaction fees are denominated in ETH, with final settlement returning to the Ethereum Layer 1 mainnet. Tom Lee emphasized that this complete loop—“fees → settlement → main chain”—makes the argument “ETH is money” even clearer.

If you connect the two remarks, Tom Lee’s logic is clear: ETH is not only a token, but the foundational money layer for on-chain economic activity. Robinhood Chain’s real-world case provides concrete evidence of ETH as a settlement medium, while the ETH 2.0 stage points to a comprehensive upgrade of the valuation framework.

BitMine’s setup: co-leading two Ethereum Foundation spinoff organizations

At WebX, Tom Lee revealed that BitMine has already supported two Ethereum Foundation spinoff organizations as the lead investor:

• EthLabs, founded by a former Ethereum Foundation contributor, focused on accelerating Ethereum’s “institutional super-cycle.”
• Ethereum Institutional, an independent non-profit organization that drives large-scale on-chain deployment of institutional finance.

Currently, BitMine holds 5.74 million ETH, accounting for about 4.8% of ETH’s total supply. Tom Lee’s stated future goals include: gradually increasing its holdings to 5% of supply, continuing to fund Ethereum Foundation spinoff projects and public goods, and investing in financial services and crypto unicorns.

This position is among the top in the crypto market. Estimated at the current price of about $1,800, the value of BitMine’s ETH holdings is approximately $1.03 billion.

From “altseason” to a “money narrative”: where is Ethereum’s 2.0 logic?

Using Tom Lee’s “1.0 → 2.0” framework, the core of Ethereum’s 1.0 era was the “smart contract platform,” with competitors including Solana and AVAX high-performance chains. By contrast, the definition of the 2.0 stage is broader: ETH becomes a universal settlement layer for on-chain finance, the payment medium for Agentic-AI, and the foundational infrastructure for tokenizing institutional assets.

This narrative matches the RWA report recently released by Grayscale, where Grayscale named Ethereum as one of the biggest winners for tokenized equity. If ETH truly upgrades from a “platform” to a “money layer,” the $250k target price has room—but it still needs more on-chain economic activity and institutional adoption to support it.

It’s worth noting that in July, the Ethereum Foundation dissolved its agreement to support the team, and EIP core development coordination is facing a staffing shortage. The infrastructure buildout for the ETH 2.0 era is in a transition period. Tom Lee’s call is both a belief guiding direction and a reminder to investors to watch for changes in the underlying layer.