ETH suddenly surged 6.16% today, breaking straight through $3,198, and there are actually two pretty interesting clues behind this move.

First—the boss of BlackRock, Larry Fink, who’s in charge of $10 trillion, basically admitted defeat at a recent New York Times event. You have to remember, he used to be one of Bitcoin’s harshest critics, calling it a “money-laundering tool.” This time, though, he publicly said he “got it wrong back then” and even labeled crypto as “digital gold,” calling it a core asset for value storage. What’s more, BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, ticker IBIT, is now the largest in the world, and 75% of buyers are new entrants from traditional finance. Looks like that Wall Street barrier is really starting to crumble.

The second clue is even more concrete—on-chain data shows that Tom Lee, the vocal Wall Street analyst, and his firm BitMine directly scooped up 96,798 ETH in the past week alone, worth about $272 million at current prices. They now hold 3.72 million ETH, with a total market value exceeding $1.04 billion. Tom Lee isn’t holding back, either—he’s openly calling the recently launched Fusaka upgrade an “epic bullish catalyst”—with 12 EIP optimizations, a new gas limit setting, and PeerDAS technology to reduce network load. Most importantly, user-friendly wallets without mnemonic phrases are finally usable, which massively lowers the entry barrier for regular users. His price targets are aggressive, too: $7,000 to $9,000 long-term, and some institutions are even calling for $12,000, which implies a 3-4x upside from here.

Bottom line: one traditional finance giant is changing its tune and embracing crypto, while institutions are putting real money on the table—these two things happening at the same time is probably no coincidence. With the Fusaka upgrade pushing both performance and user experience forward, big-money players clearly don’t want to miss out on this round of gains.

Now that ETH is already up over 6%, is this the prelude to a returning bull market, or the start of a new cycle? How high do you think this run can go?