Foreign media reports that Fundstrat, co-founder with Tom Lee, believes that the crypto market may be entering a relatively strong 12-month period. The main reasons for this are that the previous deleveraging process has been largely completed, the four-year cycle is approaching a low point, and there has been no such significant contraction in industry demand as in the past downturns.

Emotions warm up after deleveraging

Tom Lee indicates that the adjustments since last October have eliminated a considerable portion of the excessive leverage. According to him, the recent rebound is more of a correction to the overly pessimistic pricing from earlier times, rather than just a brief recovery.

He compared the current environment with previous crypto winters and believes that the fundamental conditions of the industry have not deteriorated in tandem this time. In past downturns, there were often platform closures, capital withdrawals, and a contraction in applications, but the current market has not seen a similar degree of decline.

Institutional tokenization and AI requirements

Lee mentioned that traditional financial institutions are accelerating the launch of tokenized products, especially those related to the Ethereum ecosystem. He believes that this indicates that the use cases for cryptographic infrastructure are still expanding, and not limited to speculative trading alone.

He also stated that as the capabilities of AI improve, there may be an increased demand for on-chain settlement and cryptographic infrastructure. The logic behind this is that AI agents are more suited for using programmable, native online financial platforms rather than traditional financial systems.

Institutional chasing of gains may act as a catalyst

Regarding market timing, Lee does not advocate for excessively pursuing the absolute lows. He believes that if investors wait solely for the most definitive confirmation of a bottom, they may miss out on the subsequent periods of greatest gains, as the main increases in the crypto market often occur within just a few trading days.

Lee also mentioned that there have not been many trading days with such rapid increases since 2026, which is one of the reasons why he believes there is still room for upward movement within the year. In addition to cyclical factors, if crypto assets continue to outperform traditional assets, the catch-up allocation by institutional funds could also become a source of additional momentum in the next phase.