Tom Lee shouts: Ethereum will hit $9,000 early next year, and Bitcoin will reach 200,000 by 2026

Ethereum (ETH) could climb to $7,000–9,000 by early 2026 as Wall Street accelerates tokenizing assets and moving financial activities on-chain, BitMine chairman Tom Lee said.
(Preliminary summary: BitMine pledged nearly 75,000 ETH for the first time! SharpLink uns pledged more than 35,000 ETH, but the CEO shouted: Ethereum TVL will increase 10 times next year)
(Background supplement: BitMine continues to buy Ethereum! It spent 19.63 million US dollars to buy 6,678 ETH, and the total position is approaching 410 10,000 pieces)

Tom Lee, chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, the world’s largest Ethereum reserve company, said on CNBC’s Power Lunch program this week that ether (ETH) could climb to $7,000–$9,000 in early 2026 as Wall Street accelerates the tokenization of assets and moves financial activities on-chain.

Ethereum hits $7,000–9,000 early next year

Tom Lee, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, pointed out that the investment value of Ethereum is increasingly closely linked to its role as financial infrastructure. Wall Street is actively experimenting with on-chain settlement and tokenized securities. "Wall Street wants to tokenize everything." He pointed out as examples that institutions such as brokerage Robinhood and asset management giant BlackRock are advancing related plans. Therefore, this trend can not only improve the efficiency of traditional finance, but also bring real-world application scenarios to Ethereum.

Lee further emphasized that Ethereum is increasingly important in institutional finance, especially RWA and stablecoin issuance. Ethereum currently dominates the tokenized RWA market, hosting over $12 billion in assets and issuing approximately $170 billion in stablecoins, becoming the primary settlement layer for on-chain USD activity. He expects that as adoption deepens, Ethereum could reach $20,000 in the long term.

In addition, Tom Lee is also optimistic about Bitcoin, viewing it as a "real store of value" and believes that it is quite reasonable for Bitcoin to rise to US$200,000 next year. The recent lagging performance compared to gold is only a temporary phenomenon.

BitMine pledged Ethereum for the first time

It is worth noting that earlier today (27th), BitMine Immersion Technologies’ on-chain data monitoring showed that it pledged its Ethereum holdings for the first time to earn staking income.

Currently, according to official data, the company already holds more than 4,066,062 ETH (accounting for about 3.37% of the total supply of Ethereum). On-chain data analyst @EmberCN also posted on the The interest, based on ETH’s then-current price of $2,927, was worth approximately $371 million.