What happened?
Tom Lee said Ethereum could rally toward $5,000 if the ETH/BTC pair breaks above the 0.087 resistance level. Bitmine aggressively bought more ETH and now holds about 3.24 million ETH, roughly 2.7% of the supply, while other analysts like Bollinger and Ray Youssef also see a possible move to $5,000. The call comes after a big market deleveraging and amid mixed flows into Ether ETFs and a growing validator exit queue.
Who does this affect?
Institutional buyers and large holders such as Bitmine would benefit most from a structural breakout and could drive even more accumulation. Traders and retail investors in ETH, ETH/BTC pairs, and related ETFs face outsized volatility and potential liquidation risk if momentum shifts quickly. DeFi participants and stakers are also exposed because a huge validator exit queue and liquidity strains could amplify price moves and withdrawal delays.
Why does this matter?
If ETH/BTC clears 0.087 it could trigger a major reallocation of capital into Ethereum, sending prices into discovery and potentially flipping market leadership away from Bitcoin. Lee’s valuation framework implies far higher fair values for ETH relative to BTC, so institutional flows and tokenization trends could materially reshape market structure and on-chain settlement dominance. At the same time, large exit queues, ETF outflows and macro uncertainty mean any rally could be fast and volatile, creating big upside and downside risks for the broader crypto market.