Funstrat co-founder Tom Lee says Ethereum could be the crypto market’s near-term leader, targeting a move to $12,000 by January on the back of Wall Street’s tokenization push and rising growth expectations for smart-contract platforms. In an interview released Nov. 10 with Tom Nash, Lee emphasized that while Bitcoin remains under-owned, “there’s a bigger move in Ethereum” over the next several weeks as capital reallocates toward the rails that power stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Why Ethereum Is Poised To Rally Soon
Lee anchored his call to a blend of technical and fundamental drivers. Citing Funstrat’s head of technical strategy, he noted: “Mark Newton […] thinks we can be like $9,000 to $12,000 by January. I think that’s about right. I think Ethereum […] more than doubles between now and year end or between now and January.” In parallel, he said Bitcoin could reach the “high $100,000s, maybe even $200,000 by the end of the year,” while reiterating that Ethereum likely has the bigger near-term upside.
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The crux of the Ethereum thesis, as Lee laid it out, is that the demand side of crypto is shifting toward applications that depend on smart contracts—precisely the domain where Ethereum is most entrenched.
“Even Cathie Wood wrote about it. She thinks stablecoins have been cannibalizing demand for Bitcoin and gold and tokenized gold is cannibalizing demand for Bitcoin. But stablecoins and tokenized gold run on smart contract blockchains like Ethereum,” he said. He added that “Wall Street is building and Larry Fink wants to tokenize everything on the […] blockchain. That means Ethereum is where people are starting to raise their growth expectations.”
Lee argued that this change in growth expectations matters as much as, if not more than, headline monetary policy over short windows. While acknowledging that the Federal Reserve remains a critical backdrop, he framed potential December easing as a catalyst for risk assets broadly—financials, small caps, and tech—and, by correlation, crypto. “If they cut in December, they’re confirming they’re on an easing cycle,” he said, calling that “really bullish” for equities most tightly linked to growth and liquidity. In Lee’s framework, those same flows support crypto assets—and Ethereum in particular—into year-end positioning.
The fund manager also located the crypto setup within a larger “super-cycle” he’s been mapping for years. He contends that markets are still in the early innings of an AI-driven capex boom and a demographic regime that keeps demand for productive technology elevated. That backdrop, he said, has repeatedly wrong-footed bears who anchored on yield-curve inversions and 1970s inflation analogs.
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“People have a hard time understanding and grasping super cycles […] we look for story arcs that last 10 to 15 years,” he said, arguing the last three years showcased “mass misconceptions” about recession and persistent inflation that never reconciled with reported earnings.
The Macro Backdrop
Pressed on risks to the call, Lee downplayed the idea that inflation is about to re-accelerate and argued that oil would need to approach levels near $200 to deliver a true growth shock to US households. “The most overrated risk is that inflation’s coming back,” he said, pointing to cooling housing and labor metrics and stating that recent claims about re-heating core services inflation were “dead wrong” when checked against the PCE series.
On policy path-dependence, he suggested that even a December hold by Chair Powell would likely accelerate political pressure for a leadership change, muting the medium-term impact on risk assets.
Timing-wise, Lee sees positioning as the near-term accelerant. He argued that institutions remain behind their benchmarks after repeatedly fading rallies through 2023–2025 and that the final weeks of the year often force a chase into outperforming segments. “There is incredible demand for equities because people are really off-sides […] 80% are trailing their benchmark this year […] they’re going to be buying stocks,” he said, adding that the AI trade “is going to come back strong” and that crypto tends to correlate with that move.
For Ethereum specifically, Lee’s case reduces to a simple through-line: the pipes getting built are where the next leg of growth accrues. Stablecoins, tokenized gold, and Wall Street’s broader tokenization agenda are traffic that runs on programmable blockchains; the market, in his view, is only beginning to price that through. “If you’re raising your growth expectations, then your discount to the future is going up,” Lee said, explaining why he believes ETH can “have a huge move into year end” and reach the $9,000–$12,000 range by January.
At press time, ETH traded at $3,447.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com