Odaily Planet Daily reports that Tom Lee stated that historically, during crypto bull markets, the ETH/BTC ratio tends to rise as Ethereum's usage grows relative to Bitcoin. Key catalysts for Ethereum's adoption growth have included the ICO boom of 2017–2018, the NFT surge of 2020–2021, and the stablecoin expansion expected in 2025.
Lee believes that in the next cycle, Wall Street’s tokenization of assets and deployment on blockchain, along with the use of agentic AI on blockchain, could further push the ETH/BTC ratio higher.
Lee stated that as we enter the final months of 2026, the crypto market faces several positive catalysts, including the anticipated September mid-month vote on the CLARITY Act, Korean investors rebuying crypto assets and shifting from AI stocks to the crypto market, and what he believes will be a bottoming of the "four-year cycle" in the coming weeks. These factors could pave the way for significant institutional capital inflows during the final months of 2026.
Lee also noted that since the third quarter of 2026, ETH has been the top-performing macro asset, outperforming the S&P 500 by 5430 basis points as of last Friday; the top three performing asset classes since June 30 have been ETH, BTC, and SOL. He believes that the significant outperformance of crypto assets compared to other macro assets year-to-date in the third quarter is likely to further attract institutional investors to increase their allocations to crypto assets. (PRNewswire)