Mini Crypto Winter Thawed, ETH to $60K, Says Guy Who Just Lost $3.8B on ETH

The crypto equivalent of "don't worry, I'm a doctor" has arrived: Bitmine chairman Tom Lee told Paris Blockchain Week that the recent crypto slump was a "mini crypto winter" that may already be ending—comments that came shortly after the company disclosed a multibillion-dollar quarterly loss tied largely to unrealized markdowns on its Ether holdings. Nothing says "trust me, the worst is over" like announcing your portfolio just got absolutely wrecked.

During a keynote speech at Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Lee said equity markets have bottomed due to the US-Israel war with Iran, and that Ether will emerge from its "massive consolidation," driven by tokenization and agentic artificial intelligence initiatives tied to the smart contract network. Yes, war geopolitics apparently signaleth to Lee that your ETH bags shall recovereth.

"Equity markets bottom on bad news. And we've had a lot of bad news," said Lee, citing historical examples of stock markets bottoming out after the outbreak of wars. There's nothing quite like a geopolitical crisis to make someone feel bullish, except maybe losing $3.8 billion and still seeing green.

Lee argued that equities have reached their bottom, leading to recovery from what he called an "unusual" crypto market downturn—which didn't coincide with a wider bear market in stocks for the first time. Usually, crypto dumps alongside stocks. This time it decided to dump solo, like that friend who leaves the party early without telling anyone.

Lee also said ETH is "probably on its way to 60,000" if his market thesis is correct, and later described $62,000 as a fair-value scenario over the next few years, based on Ethereum reaching roughly one-quarter of Bitcoin's long-term value. That's a 25x increase from current prices, which sounds ambitious until you remember we're talking about the same market that once valued a JPEG of a rock at $500,000.

His comments come amid a wider crypto market downturn that has seen Ether's price fall 43% since October