Tom Lee used a Hong Kong conference stage to argue that Ethereum may be close to a cyclical turn, pointing to historical market analogs and on-chain cost-basis data that, in his view, suggest the selloff has reached exhaustion.
Speaking at the 3rd Futu Expo 2026 in Hong Kong on March 13โ14, Lee said Bitmine advisor Tom DeMark had identified a striking resemblance between Ethereumโs recent price action and two major S&P 500 declines: the 1987 crash and the 2011 selloff. Lee described the setup as unusually tight.
Is The Ethereum Bottom In?
โTom DeMark, heโs a legendary market timer, and heโs provided an analysis to us that says Ethereum, in the last few months, especially since October, is really mirroring what happened to the S&P 500 in 2011 and what happened to the S&P 500 in 1987,โ Lee said. โIf you were involved in US markets, both times marked major declines in the S&P. Well, according to him, thereโs a 93% correlation to what Ethereumโs doing today to what the S&P did in 1987.โ
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That comparison is doing a lot of work in Leeโs argument. If the 1987 analog holds, he said, Ethereum would have already bottomed on March 7. If the 2011 comparison is the better fit, the market is bottoming now. In either case, Leeโs conclusion was the same: โSo using his analysis, we think weโre at the bottom or exiting the crypto winter now.โ
He did not leave the case resting on chart symmetry alone. Lee also pointed to Ethereumโs realized price, the on-chain metric that estimates the average acquisition cost of coins based on their last movement on the blockchain. In his telling, that figure now sits at $2,241 for ETH, giving investors a way to judge how deeply underwater the average holder has become.
Lee said the pattern at prior lows is revealing. In 2022, Ethereum fell to a 39% discount to realized price. In 2025, the discount reached 21% before ETH turned higher. โCurrently, weโre at 22%,โ he said, adding that the market is now sitting in roughly the same zone where last yearโs reversal began. โSo weโre at the level where in 2025, Ethereum started to turn higher.โ
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In other words, Leeโs thesis is that Ethereum does not need a pristine macro backdrop or a fresh narrative cycle to stabilize; it only needs to revisit the kind of holder pain that has historically marked exhaustion. By his measure, that threshold is already here.
TOM LEE:
THE ETHEREUM BOTTOM IS IN โผ๏ธBitmine x TOM DEMARK mapped ETH against past S&P 500 crash recoveries.
The structure now closely matches 1987 and 2011, both major cycle bottoms.
๐น 93% correlation to 1987
๐น Match to 2011 bottom
๐น Realized price: $2,241
๐น ETH ~22%โฆ pic.twitter.com/62TZscjCheโ BMNR Bullz (@BMNRBullz) March 19, 2026
He also tried to zoom out from the immediate drawdown and re-anchor ETH in a longer time horizon. โBefore you lose any hope, keep in mind that over the last 10 years, Ethereum has outperformed every other asset class over the past decade,โ Lee said. โIn the last 10 years, Ethereumโs return is 49,000%. That means almost 490 times your money.โ
Lee contrasted that with Bitcoinโs 11,000% gain over the same span and even with Nvidia, which he called โthe single best stock in the US,โ saying it had returned 65 times investorsโ money.
At press time, ETH traded at $2,147.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
