Fundstrat’s Tom Lee Reveals Why Investors Left Ethereum For Solana, But What Does Wall Street Want?

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Tom Lee, veteran trading analyst, Fundstrat co‑founder, and the strategist behind BitMine’s Ethereum treasury strategy, is once again championing Ethereum. 

During an interview with Mario Nawfal on X, Lee acknowledged how the broader crypto community appeared to abandon Ethereum in favor of faster alternatives like Solana and Sui. However, institutional investors, particularly Wall Street players, value something far more important, which only Ethereum can provide.

Retail Chases Speed, Wall Street Favors Reliability

In the interview, Lee challenges the belief that blockchain networks must prioritize transaction speed above all. Rather, he argues that institutional investors, particularly Wall Street investors, place much greater value on uptime and reliability, qualities that Ethereum has despite being slower at its base layer.

Lee said that retail investors abandoned Ethereum because they thought faster was better, leading them toward high-throughput networks like Solana and Sui with seemingly superior economics. But according to him, Wall Street thinks differently. Institutions prioritize “100 % uptime,” because they can always deploy on layer‑2 solutions to compensate for Ethereum’s base-layer speed limitations. 

Interestingly, Lee pointed to staking as another factor in which Ethereum is better than its counterparts. According to Lee, staking isn’t just about yield, but it’s about influence. “If Goldman stakes enough ETH, they have a positive voice on the Ethereum itself and how they upgrade,” he said. In short, institutional stakeholders like Goldman Sachs would care more about influencing Ethereum through staking, but this is not a weakness.

Lee noted that many veteran investors he recently spoke with still see Ethereum as underperforming, not because of any technological shortcomings, but because its price consistently lagged behind Bitcoin for months. However, this perception is now beginning to shift with Ethereum’s price action since July. 

After Ethereum broke past $4,800, the strength in price is improving confidence among crypto investors, and this momentum could set the stage for much larger growth for its price action in the near future.

Ethereum Price Action

Ethereum indeed has been on a remarkable upward arc since July. In late August 2025, the Ethereum price smashed through its previous all‑time high and traded above $4,880 for the first time since 2021, before finally peaking at $4,946. This, in turn, saw the Ethereum total market cap almost hitting the $600 billion mark

The rally wasn’t just price action. It echoed structural shifts in the institutional inflow dynamics into large cryptocurrencies, especially as seen in the performance of Spot Ethereum ETFs compared to Bitcoin.

Although Ethereum has since entered into a correction path down to the $4,400 level, the sentiment surrounding Ethereum is still bullish. Analysts have raised year‑end forecasts of Ethereum from between $6,000 and $12,000, based on increased institutional engagement and a positive influence from the US Genius Act. At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading at $4,390, up by 1.1% in the past 24 hours.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

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