Ether (ETH -0.91%) is the native cryptocurrency in the Ethereum network, where people develop and deploy decentralized software applications. It’s trading at $2,250 per coin as I write this on Nov. 3, which is less than half its 2025 record price of $4,829. The downside was driven by deteriorating sentiment across the entire crypto industry, which dragged down the value of every major coin and token.
But Tom Lee, Wall Street analyst and chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR -1.90%), thinks this is a buying opportunity. At the Proof of Talk conference back in June, he discussed a series of tailwinds that could send Ether soaring to $250,000 per coin over the long term, representing a whopping 11,000% in potential upside from its current price.
He didn’t specify a timeframe for his target, but Bitmine is buying Ether hand over first right now. Should you do the same?
Image source: Getty Images.
The Ethereum network is innovative
Decentralized software apps are popular in industries like financial services, where removing humans from the loop can speed up transactions and reduce bias in key decisions. Each app is governed by smart contracts, which are slivers of computer code that govern its core functions. Smart contracts live on the Ethereum blockchain and they typically can’t be changed, so no person or company can manipulate an app or compromise its decentralized architecture.
The Ethereum network itself is also decentralized, because rather than relying on a single data center, it runs on thousands of nodes (computers) all over the world. Even if a few nodes go offline, they won’t compromise the entire network, which is how Ethereum has maintained 100% uptime over the last 10 years.
Ether is the gas that keeps the network running. Whenever someone uses an Ethereum-based decentralized app, they activate a smart contract which triggers a fee payable in Ether to cover the necessary computer processing costs. That means demand for Ether should rise as the Ethereum ecosystem attracts more users, theoretically lifting the value of each coin.
Ethereum is entering a new era
Ethereum was originally used to create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrency-related apps, but Tom Lee thinks the platform is moving into a new era where it will be more useful in the mainstream economy. Global financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock have already launched tokenized investment funds that trade on Ethereum-based blockchains instead of traditional stock exchanges, and billions of dollars have flowed into them so far, which are used to buy low-risk assets like U.S. Treasury bonds.
Robinhood Markets built a Layer-2 blockchain on top of Ethereum called Robinhood Chain. The company is tokenizing stocks to let clients trade popular names like Nvidia outside of regular market hours. A tokenized security won’t give investors legal ownership over the underlying stock, but it allows them to profit from any potential upside in the same way.
Longer term, Lee predicts Ethereum will be increasingly popular for building payment rails and even settlement infrastructure for transactions conducted by autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents. AI agents can already buy and sell tokenized securities on behalf of their human operators through Robinhood Chain, but they could eventually have their own money, and a secure decentralized network like Ethereum would be ideal for processing their transactions.
Is Lee’s target realistic?
A little over 122.1 million Ether coins are in circulation as I write this, so at the current price of $2,250 per coin, the ecosystem has a market capitalization of $274.7 billion. Simple math suggests that a price of $250,000 per coin would lead to a market cap of $30.5 trillion, which would be almost equal to the annual output of the entire U.S. economy.
$2,225.15-$20.46 (-0.91%)
CRYPTO · As of 11:07 AM ET 11/06/26
Therefore, I don’t think Lee’s target is achievable unless decentralized apps become the standard across practically every industry, with Ethereum serving as the preferred platform for deploying them. Although there seems to be rising adoption among major financial institutions right now, the network still only has 2.1 million daily active wallet addresses across its main blockchain and all Layer-2 blockchains, which is down sharply from last year’s record high of over 4 million.
As a result, it appears the vast majority of consumers and businesses are still hesitant about the concepts of decentralization and tokenization. It’s unclear what might entice them to come around, but the lack of adoption is a real barrier to Lee’s $250,000 target for Ether.
Plus, it’s important to remember that Lee is the chairman of Bitmine Immersion Technologies, which owns over 6 million Ether coins worth $13.6 billion. Its position could be worth $1.5 trillion if Ether rises to $250,000 per coin, so he certainly has a vested interest in the highly bullish forecast.