Tom Lee: Ethereum is the U.S. economy of crypto — price will follow activity!

Fundstrat founder Tom Lee told CNBC on March 2 that the bottoming process for crypto and tech stocks is nearing its end, backing an April rally thesis and agreeing with the host's "in like a bear, out like a bull" framing for March.

On Ethereum specifically, Lee drew a striking analogy: ETH is to crypto what the U.S. economy is to global markets. As long as activity persists on the network, price will eventually follow — making current depressed valuations a function of sentiment, not fundamentals. He pointed to the fact that nearly every major tokenized fund is building on Ethereum as evidence that the underlying demand is structural, not cyclical.

The call lands at a moment when tokenized real-world assets on Ethereum have been quietly compounding even through the crypto winter, lending weight to Lee's argument that the network's economic activity has decoupled from its token price…