Tom Lee: Wall Street Stopped Watching ETH and Started Building On It 🧱

Fundstrat's Tom Lee is framing Ethereum's next leg up as an institutional construction story rather than a crypto-native rally, pointing to tokenization projects already running on the network's rails as evidence that major financial firms have moved from observation to deployment. Writing in Bitmine's July Chairman's message, Lee cited BlackRock's BUIDL fund, JPMorgan's MONY, and Robinhood Chain as concrete examples of Wall Street infrastructure being built on Ethereum, according to Cryptonews.

BUIDL, BlackRock's tokenized Treasury fund, holds roughly $2.6 billion and carries the top money-market rating from Moody's. MONY extends JPMorgan's tokenization work that began with the Onyx platform in 2020, adding another institutional-grade vehicle to the Ethereum ecosystem. Robinhood Chain was also named by Lee as part of the build-out.

Lee's central argument is that the gap between $ETH's 2025 peak near $5,000 and its current level around $1,880 reflects a regime change rather than a structural ceiling. In his view, the first era of ICOs, NFTs, ETFs, and stablecoins has run its course, and the institutions now constructing on Ethereum represent a fundamentally different demand base with longer time horizons and larger capital pools. $ETH was trading at $1,855.92, up 4.08% over 24 hours at the time of reporting.