Tom Lee names Ethereum as top Layer 1 for AI and robotics, sets $250K price target

Tom Lee has never been one to whisper his market calls. The Fundstrat co-founder and chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies used a keynote at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris to lay out what might be his most ambitious thesis yet: Ethereum is the backbone of the coming machine economy, and it could see a 50x increase from current levels. His price target for ETH sits at $250,000. That’s the kind of number that makes even hardened crypto bulls double-check their hearing. The machine economy thesis Lee’s argument rests on a straightforward observation about where the internet is heading. During his June 2026 remarks, he stated that “robots are already going to dominate most traffic on the internet.” If autonomous AI agents are going to transact with each other at scale, they’ll need a payment rail that doesn’t require a human compliance officer approving every wire transfer. That’s where Ethereum fits in, according to Lee. Traditional banking infrastructure was built for humans filling out forms and waiting three to five business days. Smart contracts running on a proof-of-stake blockchain can settle transactions in seconds, verify identity programmatically, and operate arou...