ETH to $20K by 2026? AI Examines Tom Lee’s Ultra-Bullish Prediction

Will ETH surge to $60K in 2026 as Lee predicted? Here’s ChatGPT’s take on it.

Tom Lee has been a long-time cryptocurrency proponent who just recently shifted his focus from BTC to ETH, and his company, BitMine Immersion Technologies, now owns billions of dollars worth of the largest altcoin.

He has also made numerous bullish predictions about its price trajectory for the following years. While it seems that his most outrageous target for 2025 will not be hit, he recently offered a more modest but still quite optimistic forecast for next year – $20,000 per ETH.

Speaking at the Binance blockchain conference in Dubai on Thursday, he noted that such a massive 550% rally would be possible if Ethereum’s role in the RWA space grows further.

Is $20K ETH Possible?

We asked ChatGPT to evaluate Lee’s prediction given the available information now and after assuming that Ethereum will indeed have a key role in an ever-growing world of tokenization. It noted that reaching such a massive target “is possible” but only if several critical conditions align.

It admitted that tokenization appears to be the next big thing in tech, with behemoths like BlackRock, UBS, JPMorgan, and Citi entering the space, and the migration to blockchain could indeed benefit Ethereum since it’s already the dominant settlement layer for such assets.

The AI chatbot also mentioned ETH’s deflationary mechanics, which were introduced after the Merge and the EIP-1559 upgrade. While they don’t guarantee that the asset will be net deflationary all the time, the overall production of ether has dramatically slowed since the updates were introduced.

“If network activity rises due to RWAs, staking, and L2 expansion, supply pressure would shrink while demand increases — a classic recipe for a large price surge,” said ChatGPT.

The Bear Case

Some of the hurdles that could stand in ETH’s path to $20,000 come in the form of competition, as other layer-1 networks, such as Solana, Avalanche, Sui, and Aptos, are striving to steal portions of its dominance in DeFi, RWA, and a few more industry niches.

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Additionally, ChatGPT argued that network activity doesn’t guarantee price increases for the underlying asset, especially if users opt for the layer-2 alternative rather than operating directly on Ethereum.

Lastly, hitting a price of $20,000 would mean that ETH’s market cap had soared to somewhere around $2.5 trillion. This would place ETH well above BTC’s current capitalization and close to giants like Amazon and Microsoft, which sounds unrealistic at the moment.

“A surge to $20K is not impossible — especially if tokenization becomes a multi-trillion-dollar market and Ethereum remains the dominant platform powering it.

But the timeline may be too aggressive. A more realistic bullish target for 2026 could sit in the $6,000–$10,000 range, barring a supercycle or extreme institutional inflows.

Lee’s vision could still materialize — just perhaps later than 2026,” concluded ChatGPT.