Funstrat co-founder Tom Lee says Ethereum could be the short-term leader in the cryptocurrency market, which is targeting a surge to $12,000 by January amid a push for tokenization on Wall Street and rising growth expectations for clever contract platforms. In a November 10 interview with Tom Nash, Lee emphasized that while Bitcoin remains undersupplied, “there will be more movement in Ethereum over the next few weeks” as capital shifts toward the rails powering stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Why Ethereum is about to skyrocket
Lee anchored his call on a combination of technical and fundamental factors. Quoting Funstrat’s head of technical strategy, he noted: “Mark Newton […] he thinks we can make between $9,000 and $12,000 by January. I think that’s right. I think Ethereum […] more than doubling between now and the end of the year, or between now and January.” At the same time, he said Bitcoin could hit “the high $100,000s and maybe even $200,000 by the end of the year,” reiterating that Ethereum likely has a bigger advantage in the low term.
The crux of the Ethereum thesis, as Lee puts it, is that cryptocurrency demand is shifting toward clever contract-dependent applications – the domain in which Ethereum is most entrenched.
“Even Cathie Wood has written about this. She believes that stablecoins cannibalize demand for Bitcoin and gold, and tokenized gold cannibalizes demand for Bitcoin. But stablecoins and tokenized gold run on smart contract blockchains like Ethereum,” he said. He added that “Wall Street is growing and Larry Fink wants to tokenize everything on the exchange […] blockchain. This means that Ethereum is where people are starting to raise their growth expectations.”
Lee argued that this change in growth expectations matters as much, if not more, than the main tenets of monetary policy in the low term. While acknowledging that the Federal Reserve remains a critical backdrop, he identified December’s potential monetary policy easing as a catalyst for broad risk assets – financials, diminutive caps and technology – and, by correlation, cryptocurrencies. “If they cut prices in December, it will confirm that they have entered an easing cycle,” he said, calling it “really bullish” for stocks most closely tied to growth and liquidity. In Lee’s terms, these same flows are supporting crypto assets – and Ethereum in particular – in year-end positioning.
The fund manager also located the crypto setup within a larger “supercycle” that it has been mapping for years. He argues that markets are still at the beginning of an AI-fueled investment boom and a demographic regime that keeps demand for manufacturing technologies high. In his opinion, bears who relied on yield curve inversions and inflation analogues from the 1970s were repeatedly wrong in this regard.
“It’s demanding for people to understand and comprehend supercycles […] we’re looking for stories that last 10 to 15 years,” he said, arguing that the past three years had exposed “massive misconceptions” about recession and persistent inflation that were never reconciled with reported earnings.
Macro background
Pressed on the risks of the call, Lee downplayed the view that inflation would soon accelerate again and argued that crude oil would need to get closer to levels near $200 to cause a real growth shock to U.S. households. “The most overrated risk is a return of inflation,” he said, pointing to the cooling of housing and work indicators and saying that recent claims about reheating inflation in core services were “completely wrong” compared to the PCE series.
On policy path dependence, he suggested that even retaining Chairman Powell in December would likely accelerate political pressure for a leadership change, moderating the medium-term impact on risky assets.
When it comes to timing, Lee sees positioning as an accelerating factor in the near future. He argued that institutions are lagging behind their benchmarks after multiple declines in growth between 2023 and 2025, and that the final weeks of the year often force a rush to outperforming segments. “There is incredible demand for the stock because people are really offside […] 80% does not exceed this year’s benchmark […] will be buying stocks,” he said, adding that AI trading “will come back strong” and that cryptocurrencies tend to correlate with that move.
For Ethereum, Lee’s case comes down to a plain through line: the pipes being built are where the next stage of growth occurs. Stablecoins, tokenized gold, and the broader tokenization agenda on Wall Street are all programmable blockchain movements; In his opinion, the market is just starting to price it in. “If you raise growth expectations, that means your discount going forward is rising,” Lee said, explaining why he thinks ETH could “make a significant year-end impact” and hit the $9,000-$12,000 range in January.
At the time of publication, the price of ETH was $3,447.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
