Tom Lee: Crypto market to 'bottom out' in the coming weeks, expects ETH/BTC ratio to continue rising

BlockBeats News, September 8 — Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee stated that entering the final month of Q3 2026, as of last Friday, ETH has been the best-performing macro asset this quarter, outperforming the S&P 500 by 5,430 basis points (54.3 percentage points). In fact, since June 30, the three best-performing asset classes have been ETH, BTC, and SOL. Given the significant outperformance of crypto assets relative to other macro assets so far in Q3 this year, this lays the groundwork for institutional investors to further increase their crypto holdings.

Entering the final months of 2026, we believe there are multiple positive catalysts in the market. These include the anticipated vote on the CLARITY Act in mid-September. Additionally, Korean investors have begun re-purchasing crypto assets, shifting from AI stocks to the crypto market. The four-year cycle is set to bottom out in the coming weeks. These factors will create conditions for what we expect to be large-scale institutional participation in crypto buying during the final months of 2026, particularly driven by tokenization and agentic AI developments.

During crypto market bull cycles, the ETH/BTC ratio typically rises, primarily due to Ethereum's increasing usage relative to Bitcoin. Previous cycles have been driven by different narratives, including ICOs from 2017 to 2018, NFTs from 2020 to 2021, and stablecoins in 2025. In the upcoming crypto market cycle, the ETH/BTC ratio is expected to continue rising, fueled by Wall Street's tokenization of assets on the blockchain and the use of blockchain by agentic AI.