Ethereum is revving its engines for what Funstrat co-founder Tom Lee calls a near-term explosion.
Picture ETH rising to $12,000 by January, fueled by Wall Street’s obsession with tokenization and smart-contract growth.
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Lee told Tom Nash that while Bitcoin has a gravitational pull, the rocket fuel right now is loaded into Ethereum, the platform powering stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Smart contracts
Lee’s forecast isn’t pulled from thin air. Funstrat’s head of technical strategy Mark Newton charts Ethereum’s price between $9,000 and $12,000 in the next couple of months.
Experts say don’t forget that Bitcoin has its own fireworks planned, high $100,000s, maybe even $200,000 by year-end, but Lee says Ethereum’s got the flashier near-term moves.
The spotlight is shifting to the rails where smart contracts operate, and that means Ethereum’s playing king of the hill.
AI-driven investment boom
Digging deeper, Lee points to smart contract blockchains as the epicenter of growing demand.
He pulls in Cathie Wood’s thesis, stablecoins and tokenized gold are nibbling at Bitcoin’s dominance, and guess what?
They run on Ethereum’s turf. With Wall Street’s chief Larry Fink eager to tokenize everything, Ethereum becomes the prime infrastructure for this new financial frontier.
The lesson? It’s about a fundamental shift in where growth lives.
Lee frames this all inside a broader “super-cycle,” powered by an AI-driven investment boom and long-term demographic shifts.
Markets have stumbled on short-term fears of inflation and recessions, but Lee sees the bigger cinematic arc spanning 10-15 years, where demand for productivity technology remains sky-high.
Tokenization frenzy
When pressed on risks, Lee shrugs off any looming inflation spike unless oil prices rocket to near $200 a barrel.
He flags recent chatter about persistent inflation as “dead wrong,” pointing to cooler housing data and labor markets.
Even a Federal Reserve pause in December might stoke political drama but likely won’t quash the growing appetite for risk assets, especially equities, crypto’s close cousin in the party.
Timing drives Lee’s optimism. Market analysts say institutions have been lagging behind their benchmarks all year, and year-end tends to ignite furious buying sprees.
With AI tech making a comeback, Ethereum’s linked to that upcoming surge.
Lee sums it up, saying that stablecoins, tokenized gold, and Wall Street’s tokenization frenzy all trail through Ethereum’s programmable channels.
He thinks the market is just beginning to realize this, and that pumped-up growth expectation could catapult ETH into triple-digit thousands by January.
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Cryptocurrency and Web3 expert, founder of Kriptoworld
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With years of experience covering the blockchain space, András delivers insightful reporting on DeFi, tokenization, altcoins, and crypto regulations shaping the digital economy.
📅 Published: November 13, 2025 • 🕓 Last updated: November 13, 2025
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