Tom Lee has remained bullish on Ethereum despite consistent price weakness. | Source: CCN.
Key Takeaways
Tom Lee dismisses Ethereum funding concerns.
Prediction market traders remain bearish on ETH.
Lee remains one of Ethereum’s biggest bulls.
Prediction market traders are increasingly betting that Ethereum’s price will crash this year, even as prominent crypto bull Tom Lee dismissed concerns about a looming funding crisis for the network’s core developers.
Tom Lee Rejects Ethereum Funding Crisis Fears
The bearish wagers come after former Ethereum Foundation contributor Trent Van Epps warned that Ethereum’s development ecosystem could face a funding shortfall within the next three to nine months.
Van Epps, who worked at the Ethereum Foundation from 2021 to 2026, focusing on core development coordination and protocol funding, argued that “the most practical and unavoidable funding outcomes of Subtraction have begun to take effect over the past 12 months.”
He pointed to the Ethereum Foundation’s efforts to reduce spending and the expiration of the Client Incentive Program (CIP) as potential catalysts.
“From recent conversations across all core development, there is a risk we will enter a slow-burning funding crisis within the next 3-9 months,” Van Epps wrote.
Van Epps argued the short-term funding gap reflected deeper structural challenges around financing Ethereum’s shared infrastructure.
“This risks damaging our institutional capacity: the hard-won ability to orchestrate industry-leading feature and maintenance delivery across +10 clients, research, and coordination teams,” he wrote.
According to Van Epps, maintaining Ethereum’s development ecosystem requires “roughly $30mm annually across a variety of increasingly constrained sources.”
Without sustained funding, he warned the network could lose contributors with years of accumulated expertise and slow progress on major initiatives.
“Without continuous funding, we lose people with critical context built up over years, fall behind on looming challenges like quantum computing or scaling, and ultimately risk mainnet’s reputation for reliability,” he wrote.
However, Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee rejected the notion that Ethereum faces a genuine funding emergency.
“In my opinion, zero chance of this ‘crisis’ happening for ETH,” Lee wrote on Friday.
“Zero,” he added. “Funding secured.”
Bitmine Continues Aggressive Ethereum Buying
Lee’s dismissal of the funding concerns also comes as Bitmine, the Ethereum treasury company he chairs, continues to accumulate Ethereum aggressively despite its recent price weakness.
According to a June 15 holdings update, Bitmine held approximately 5.62 million Ethereum, worth around $9.7 billion at Coinbase pricing.
The company said it purchased an additional 76,881 ETH during the previous week alone.
“Over the past week, we acquired 76,881 ETH,” Bitmine said in the update.
“We are maintaining a somewhat elevated pace of buying as we believe this pullback in ETH prices does not reflect the strengthening of Ethereum fundamentals.”
Traders Bet on Lower Ethereum Prices
Despite Lee’s confidence in Ethereum’s long-term outlook, traders on Kalshi are increasingly positioning for downside risk.
Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market platform, currently operates a “How low will Ethereum get this year?” market that allows participants to wager on Ethereum’s lowest price level during 2026.
Bearish predictions are soaring. | Source: Kalshi
Market probabilities currently suggest:
73% chance ETH falls below $1,500
57% chance ETH falls below $1,250
31% chance ETH falls below $1,000
18% chance ETH falls below $750
Recent contract pricing suggests traders expect Ethereum to reach a yearly low near $1,200 — although a significant number of traders have bet on a lower price.
Ethereum Price Could Reach $250,000?
The funding debate and growing bearish wagers come just weeks after Lee delivered one of the most ambitious Ethereum forecasts on record.
Speaking at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris on June 2, Lee argued that Ethereum could eventually surge to $250,000 as tokenization and artificial intelligence increasingly rely on blockchain infrastructure.
“If a thesis is correct and Ethereum is going to break out of this consolidation, and the consolidation breakout is tokenization and AI, you know, I think that that’s probably 50X or so—significant upside for Ethereum,” Lee said.
He added that if Ethereum reaches that level, companies building Ethereum treasury strategies could see outsized gains.
“If Etherrealize is correct, and Ethereum goes to $250,000, that values Bitmine stock at $5,000. It’s a bargain at $18,” Lee said.
Lee also outlined a more conservative scenario, saying a “reasonable” base case would see Ethereum reach $22,000.
The veteran strategist argued that Ethereum is likely to benefit the most from the tokenization of traditional financial assets.
He estimated that as much as $300 trillion of value could eventually move onto blockchain rails.
“If a market is going to go to $300 trillion of asset value, Ethereum isn’t going to stay at $100 billion and $200 billion of total network value,” he said.
Lee also suggested the current pessimism within the market resembles conditions typically seen near cycle bottoms.
“I think this is all of what you should expect at the bottom of a cycle,” Lee said.
Adding: “If you’re bearish today, you are bearish at the bottom for Bitcoin and Ethereum.”
