Ethereum to hit $9,000 early next year, Bitcoin to reach $200,000 by 2026

Tom Lee, Chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies, the world's largest Ethereum reserve company, stated this week on CNBC's Power Lunch that as Wall Street accelerates asset tokenization and moves financial activities on-chain, Ethereum(ETH) could climb to $7,000–$9,000 in early 2026.
Ethereum to surge to $7,000–$9,000 early next year
As co-founder and research head of Fundstrat Global Advisors, Tom Lee 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 exemplified, citing institutions like Robinhood and asset management giant BlackRock that are advancing related plans. Therefore, this trend can not only improve traditional financial efficiency but also bring real-world application scenarios to Ethereum.
Lee further emphasized that Ethereum's position in institutional finance is becoming increasingly important, especially in RWA and stablecoin issuance. Ethereum currently dominates the tokenized RWA market, holding over $12 billion in assets and issuing about $170 billion in stablecoins, becoming the main settlement layer for on-chain dollar activities. He expects that with deeper adoption, Ethereum could long-term reach $20,000.
Additionally, Tom Lee is also optimistic about Bitcoin, viewing it as a "true store of value," and believes that it is quite reasonable for Bitcoin to rise to $200,000 next year. Its recent underperformance compared to gold is just a temporary phenomenon.
It is worth noting that on the 27th, BitMine Immersion Technologies, according to on-chain data monitoring, first staked its held Ethereum to earn staking rewards.
Currently, official data shows that the company holds over 4,066,062 ETH(, accounting for approximately 3.37% of the total Ethereum supply). On-chain analyst @EmberCN also posted on X platform today that, based on an approximate annualized yield(APY) of 3.12%, if BitMine stakes all its Ethereum holdings, it could earn about 126,800 ETH in interest in one year. At the ETH price of $2,927 at that time, this would be worth about $371 million.