Fundstrat’s Tom Lee Reveals Why Investors Left Ethereum For Solana – Details

Tom Lee, veteran trading analyst, Fundstrat co‑founder, and the strategist behind BitMine’s Ethereum treasury strategy , is once again championing ￰0￱ 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 ￰1￱ 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 ￰2￱ 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 ￰3￱ according to him, Wall Street thinks ￰4￱ 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 ￰5￱ 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 ￰6￱ short, institutional stakeholders like Goldman Sachs would care more about influencing Ethereum through staking, but this is not a ￰7￱ 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 ￰8￱ 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 ￰9￱ Price Action Ethereum indeed has been on a remarkable upward arc since ￰10￱ 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 ￰11￱ echoed structural shifts in the institutional inflow dynamics into large cryptocurrencies, especially as seen in the performance of Spot Ethereum ETFs compared to ￰12￱ Ethereum has since entered into a correction path down to the $4,400 level, the sentiment surrounding Ethereum is still ￰13￱ 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 ￰14￱ the time of writing, Ethereum is trading at $4,390, up by 1.1% in the past 24 ￰15￱ image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView