More like a pipe dream.  He has a vested interest in pumping the price.  But I honestly don't expect ETH to break 2K and stay above that.  It certainly made a lot of people nervous with the bruhah between miners and dev.  As for the fees, yeah, even at 100x the fees will still be high, despite what VB thinks.  People will pay high fees for priority in the block.  And nothing says post Eth 2.0 that devs charge a fee of 5% to 10% for priority inclusion.