Tom Lee expanded his bullish case for Ethereum by calling it the most important Layer-1 for the AI era, arguing blockchains and smart contracts will be needed to verify and constrain what increasingly capable AI systems and robots do. The Fundstrat co-founder said Ethereum is an important "downstream story" for AI and tied that thesis to a rising ETH/BTC ratio at 0.02994, which he said has broken above a long-term downtrend and could be driven higher by Wall Street tokenization and agentic AI after earlier cycles led by initial coin offerings, NFTs and stablecoins. Lee's latest comments build on his earlier technical and market-structure case for Ether. He had said a move through the top of the daily Ichimoku cloud near $1,970 would mark ETH's first bullish trend signal since October 9, 2025, after Ether traded near $1,906, about 3.5% below that level. He also previously linked Ethereum's outlook to growing on-chain financial activity and AI-related usage. A later report highlighted that Lee cited BlackRock's new Bitcoin paper to support his Ethereum thesis, even though the BlackRock note itself focused on Bitcoin's pullback rather than blockchain use cases for AI or robotics. Lee chairs Bitmine, which the report described as the largest corporate holder of Ethereum among treasury firms. The new detail sharpens the distinction between Lee's interpretation of the broader market backdrop and the narrower subject matter of BlackRock's report.