Bitmine’s Tom Lee Explains Why Ethereum Has Been Falling

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Ethereum (ETH) has been under heavy pressure in recent weeks, and Bitmine chair and Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee believes rising oil prices are playing a major role in the weakness. Lee argued that ETH’s inverse correlation with oil has reached its highest level ever, and Ethereum was falling as crude climbed during the past six weeks amid escalating geopolitical tensions and broader risk-off sentiment. Despite the near-term sell-off, he still expects tokenization and agentic AI to remain major long-term drivers for Ethereum through 2026.

Tom Lee Points to Oil as Ethereum’s Biggest Headwind

In a thread posted on X on May 18, Lee said rising oil prices over the past six weeks have closely tracked Ethereum’s decline.

According to him, ETH now has its strongest inverse relationship with oil on record, meaning higher crude prices have coincided with weaker Ethereum performance. Lee suggested that if oil prices reverse lower, ETH could rebound as well.

Still, he framed the move as short-term “tactical noise” rather than a structural issue for Ethereum. Lee maintained that the long-term investment case for ETH still revolves around tokenization and agentic AI infrastructure, which he described as major structural drivers expected to strengthen through 2026.

His comments arrived during another brutal trading session for the crypto market. Ethereum dropped toward $2,100 and Bitcoin (BTC) briefly slid below $77,000 as geopolitical tensions and risk-off sentiment accelerated selling pressure across digital assets.

At press time on May 19, the price of ETH stood at $2,113.15, which indicates a 0.1% decline in the last 24 hours, a drop of 8% over the past week, and an accumulated loss of 8.9% across the month, per the latest chart data.

Aggressive Selling Wipes Out Leveraged Longs

Data shared by CryptoQuant analyst Amr Taha showed synchronized selling pressure across Bitcoin and Ethereum on Binance.

Ethereum taker sell volume surged above $1.1 billion as ETH tested support near $2,100, whereas Bitcoin simultaneously saw multiple spikes above the $1 billion level as it fell below $77,000.

The coordinated move suggested traders were aggressively exiting positions across the wider crypto market as opposed to merely rotating between assets.

Meanwhile, market observer CW claimed most high-leverage Ethereum longs have now been liquidated. According to the analyst, only around $600 million in leveraged ETH long positions remain, and short positions have climbed to about $6.3 billion.

CW also noted that Ethereum recently filled a CME gap below current prices and created a new one near $2,200. The analyst argued that multiple unfilled CME gaps now sit between current levels and $3,200, which may improve Ethereum’s medium-term technical setup despite ongoing volatility.

Some traders, however, still expect another leg lower before a sustained recovery begins, especially as the ETH/BTC ratio recently fell to its weakest level in roughly 10 months.

The post Bitmine’s Tom Lee Explains Why Ethereum Has Been Falling appeared first on TechGaged.com.