Wall Street permabull Tom Lee expects Ethereum to significantly outperform Bitcoin in the coming years.
The Fundstrat co-founder believes that the next major catalyst for $ETH could be substantially larger than the forces that drove previous crypto cycles.
The Fundstrat founder and BitMine chairman views the Ethereum-to-Bitcoin ($ETH/$BTC) ratio as an important signal for the broader cryptocurrency market.
In a recent post, Lee said the "tailwind" for $ETH over the next few years could exceed those seen during the initial coin offering (ICO) and non-fungible token ($NFT) booms.
At press time, the ratio stood at 0.02994 and was moving above a long-term downtrend that had constrained Ethereum against Bitcoin over the past several years.
"We are encouraged to see the $ETH/$BTC ratio at 0.02994 and rising," Lee said in BitMine’s latest update. Markets are beginning to recognize the growing use of Ethereum for tokenization and agentic-AI applications, the analyst posits.
The 2017-2018 cycle was dominated by initial coin offerings. The 2020-2021 cycle brought an explosion in NFTs and decentralized applications. More recently, the stablecoin expansion has provided another major source of activity on Ethereum and other smart-contract networks.
According to Lee, the $ETH/$BTC ratio will rise as Wall Street tokenizes assets on blockchain networks and as agentic AI begins using blockchains.
Earlier this month, he argued that Ethereum could become the "future settlement layer of finance."
Tokenized stocks, bonds, funds and other real-world assets could create demand for Ethereum-based infrastructure. At the same time, AI agents interacting with blockchain systems could introduce another class of users and transactions.
BitMine's growing $ETH holdings #
BitMine reported on Aug. 17 that it held 5.8 million $ETH (4.8% of Ethereum's total supply of 120.7 million $ETH).
The company valued the position at roughly $11 billion using an $ETH price of $1,893.
BitMine added another 9,926 $ETH during the preceding week.