Wall Street Shorts ETH: Vitalik Knew and Front-Ran, Tom Lee Still Deluded

Odaily星球日报Published on 2026-03-06Last updated on 2026-03-06

Abstract

Wall Street short-selling firm Culper Research has initiated a short position on ETH and related securities, including Bitmine (BMNR). The firm argues that Ethereum’s token economic model was fundamentally broken following the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025, which increased the gas limit from 45M to 60M. Contrary to initial expectations of a 10–30% drop, gas fees fell by approximately 90%, leading to a surge in low-value on-chain activity such as address poisoning and dust attacks. These activities now account for a significant portion of transaction growth and new wallet creation, distorting metrics often cited as signs of organic adoption. Culper alleges that Vitalik Buterin and core developers severely miscalculated Layer 1 demand elasticity using outdated models, overestimating real demand by 3–9 times. The report claims Vitalik is aware of these issues and has been selling ETH, exceeding previously announced sales targets. Meanwhile, Tom Lee of Bitmine continues to defend ETH based on misleading on-chain activity growth. Additionally, validators are earning 40–50% less in tips per unit of gas, reducing staking yields and potentially weakening institutional interest. Ethereum is also losing developer and market share to Solana, which has attracted major institutional DeFi adoption. Culper concludes that Ethereum’s tokenomics are irreparably damaged and expects further price declines.

This article is from:Culper Research

Compiled by | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Editor's Note: On March 6, Wall Street short-selling firm Culper Research suddenly published an article announcing it is shorting ETH and related securities like BMNR. Culper Research's logic is that Vitalik and other developers miscalculated Ethereum's demand elasticity before the Fusaka upgrade, leading to the upgrade damaging ETH's token economic model. Culper Research also mentioned that Vitalik is well aware of this and is actively front-running with practical actions, while the deluded Tom Lee is heading towards a dead end.

In response to the firm's massive shorting, Vitalik himself and Tom Lee have not yet responded, but Vitalik's father, Dmitry Buterin (dima.eth), responded by saying: "When you see the phrase 'Vitalik knows this and is selling,' you don't need to read further. They are clowns craving attention, not researchers."

Below is the original content from Culper Research, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily. Compiling this article does not mean we agree with Culper Research's views, but is only to present the perspective and market煽动 of some Wall Street institutions regarding ETH.

Latest disclosure: We are shorting ETH and ETH-related stocks, including Bitmine (BMNR).

We believe that after the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025, ETH's token economic model has been broken. Vitalik knows this and is selling; while ETH's staunchest bull, Tom Lee, continues to add ineffective investments. ETH will continue to fall.

Tom Lee's Bitmine has consistently defended ETH, claiming that "ETH is not in a death spiral due to increasing utility." He cited the surge in active addresses and transaction numbers on Ethereum after the Fusaka upgrade as evidence of so-called "improved fundamentals" and institutional adoption, but he is completely wrong.

By Tom Lee's own logic, if on-chain activity on Ethereum does not reflect real usage growth and fundamental improvement, then ETH is indeed in a death spiral.

And our research shows that this is exactly what is happening.

We conducted a comprehensive analysis of on-chain data from January 2025 to February 2026, and the results show that what Lee calls "institutional adoption driving Ethereum's activity growth" can actually be explained by a large number of low-value address poisoning and wallet dusting behaviors. These behaviors were triggered by the excess block space after the Fusaka upgrade.

After the Fusaka upgrade:

95% of new wallet growth comes from newly created dust addresses;
Address poisoning attacks have increased by more than 3 times;
Poisoning behavior explains over 50% of Ethereum's transaction growth;
Poisoning transactions now account for 22.5% of all Ethereum transactions;

The Fusaka upgrade increased the gas limit from 45M to 60M, aiming to expand Ethereum Layer1 capacity. Vitalik and the protocol team previously predicted gas fees would drop by 10%–30%, but the reality is that gas fees dropped by about 90%.

Vitalik and the validators made a serious miscalculation in Layer1 demand elasticity. They used outdated mathematical models (based on assumptions from before EIP-1559 and before Layer2 emerged), thereby overestimating Layer1 demand by 3 to 9 times. This is also why we believe Vitalik is selling large amounts of ETH. On January 30, Vitalik announced in advance that he would sell 16,384 ETH to fund the Ethereum Foundation's "austerity period," but since then, he has sold over 19,300 ETH and is still selling.

Vitalik understands something Tom Lee does not — ETH's token economic model has been broken.

We personally documented Ethereum network address poisoning. We created two new addresses and transferred between them. Within 5 minutes, we were subjected to an address poisoning attack. We encourage readers to verify this phenomenon themselves. Currently, the rate of losses due to poisoning attacks is 8 times higher than before the Fusaka upgrade.

Furthermore, the increase in the gas limit has hit Ethereum's validators群体, as validators now see a 40%–50% decline in tip income per unit of gas. Falling yields will weaken staking demand and high-value transaction activity, further undermining institutional adoption. This flywheel has now started to reverse.

Meanwhile, Ethereum continues to lose market share to Solana and its own Layer2 networks.

Solana developer count grew 29% in 2025;
Ethereum developer growth was only 6%;
Talent is leaving the Ethereum ecosystem;
Institutions like Visa and Citigroup have chosen Solana for DeFi applications;
Solana DEX trading volume is already more than double that of Ethereum.

In the dot-com bubble era, Netscape and Nokia dominated the market for over 10 years, but the real winners were Google and Apple. We believe Ethereum's situation is similar — we think Ethereum's token economic model has collapsed, Tom Lee is trapped in his own position, and ETH's price will continue to fall.

US Government Suddenly Halts Anthropic's Strongest Model, "Quasi-IPO Stock Price" Plunges 3.7% Overnight

U.S. Government Halts Anthropic's Top AI Models, 'Pre-IPO' Price Drops 3.7% On June 12, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to shut down access to its two most powerful AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, citing national security concerns. The directive, issued by the Department of Commerce, required Anthropic to block access for all foreign nationals, leading the company to disable the models globally for all users. Anthropic strongly opposed the move, arguing the government's basis was a "narrow jailbreak vulnerability" and warning that applying such a standard industry-wide would effectively halt all frontier model deployments. The news impacted Anthropic's implied valuation in speculative markets. The Anthropic perpetual contract on Hyperliquid fell approximately 3.7% to around $1,627, down from highs above $1,800 following the models' release. Unauthorized tokenized products linked to Anthropic on Solana also saw significant declines. The models, launched just days earlier on June 9, represented a major capability leap for Anthropic. Fable 5 was its first public release of a "Mythos"-tier model above its flagship Claude Opus. The shutdown creates an ironic situation for Anthropic, a company founded on "AI safety" principles, and adds uncertainty to its ongoing IPO preparations. The company is actively engaging with regulators to resolve what it calls a "misunderstanding" and restore service.

marsbit18m ago

US Government Suddenly Halts Anthropic's Strongest Model, "Quasi-IPO Stock Price" Plunges 3.7% Overnight

marsbit18m ago

SpaceX IPO Creates Trillion-Dollar Billionaire: Musk's Wealth Equals Half of Crypto Market

SpaceX's record-breaking IPO has propelled Elon Musk to become the first modern billionaire with a personal net worth exceeding $1 trillion, reaching $1.11 trillion according to Bloomberg. This staggering wealth surpasses the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies excluding Bitcoin and equals roughly half of the entire crypto market's value. The milestone highlights extreme wealth concentration and the significant devaluation of the altcoin market, whose total cap has nearly halved since late 2025 as capital flows into large tech stocks. SpaceX's Nasdaq debut saw its valuation hit $2.2 trillion, with shares soaring from a $135 offer price to close at $161. Its first-day trading volume of $85 billion set a new global IPO record. Musk owns 42% of the company. Despite his wealth dwarfing the altcoin sector, Musk maintains deep ties to digital assets. He personally holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin, while his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, collectively hold over 30,000 Bitcoin, ranking among the top corporate BTC holders globally. His acquisition and integration of financial data tools into X (formerly Twitter) further connect his ecosystem to the markets. Ultimately, Musk's trillion-dollar status underscores the immense wealth controlled by tech founders, though this fortune remains largely tied to volatile stock prices rather than liquid assets.

Foresight News26m ago

SpaceX IPO Creates Trillion-Dollar Billionaire: Musk's Wealth Equals Half of Crypto Market

Foresight News26m ago

Hardcore First Look | Ocean Embodied Intelligence Company 'Shihang Intelligence' Secures Record-Breaking 1 Billion in Funding, Zhu Xiaohu, Temasek Place Bets

Breaking News | Ocean Embodied Intelligence company "Shihang Intelligent" secures a record-breaking 1 billion RMB (approximately 10 billion yuan) in Series A financing, with investment from Zhu Xiaohu and Temasek. Author: Qiu Xiaofen | Editor: Yuan Silai Ocean Embodied Intelligence company "Shihang Intelligent" has completed its Series A funding round, raising over 1 billion RMB. This marks the largest single funding round in the global marine robotics field to date. Investors include upstream momentum funds from chip companies "Moore Thread" and "Kunlunxin," Singapore's state-owned investment platform Vertex Growth, and listed company Dyneo, among others. Existing investors like GSR Ventures (whose founder Zhu Xiaohu has invested for the fifth time), Vertex Ventures China, Hua Ying Capital, and Long Capital also significantly increased their investments. Founder and CEO Chen Xiaobo, a 1989-born alumnus of Harbin Engineering University, is a long-time expert in underwater robotics. He received the National Defense Science and Technology Progress Award at age 28 (the youngest recipient) and led the development of China's first commercial underwater cleaning robot. The funds will be used for core technology R&D, global market expansion, and building the industry chain ecosystem to scale the application of marine robots in complex underwater scenarios. The ocean is considered one of the most challenging environments for robotics due to low light, high turbidity, complex currents, limited communication, high pressure, and corrosion. "Shihang Intelligent" focuses on developing core underlying technologies for marine robots, covering six key systems: power, control, sensing, navigation, sealing, and deployment. Its robots are capable of operating at depths from 0 to 10,000 meters with full degrees of freedom, performing complex maneuvers, autonomous navigation, and multi-robot collaboration. Applications include ship cleaning, underwater security, offshore wind power, marine ranching, and seabed inspection. The company's order value for the first half of 2026 alone has exceeded 1 billion RMB. Its "Orca Robot" is used by major shipping companies and has performed maintenance on over a thousand large vessels. In April of this year, the company launched its ocean embodied large model "Cangqiong CEORION." Unlike traditional remote-controlled or pre-programmed robots, this model integrates environmental perception, task understanding, and action generation into a single end-to-end architecture. Trained on millions of hours of commercial operation data and simulation data, it covers 12 major underwater operation scenarios. In simulations, it achieved over 90% task success rate and over 70% zero-shot adaptation capability to unseen environments. A built-in physics reasoning module reduces collision risk by 80%, enabling autonomous operation even with weak or no communication. Recently, "Shihang Intelligent" was selected as a core technology partner for Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority national hull inspection and cleaning program. These advancements indicate marine robotics is moving from pilot projects to scaled applications, with real-world operations generating valuable data to continuously improve robot capabilities. CEO Chen Xiaobo stated the company will continue investing in core marine robotics technology, the embodied intelligence model, and global application scenarios to expand into more high-risk, high-difficulty, and high-value underwater operations.

marsbit52m ago

Hardcore First Look | Ocean Embodied Intelligence Company 'Shihang Intelligence' Secures Record-Breaking 1 Billion in Funding, Zhu Xiaohu, Temasek Place Bets

marsbit52m ago

Three Months, 35 Billion Yuan: Investors Rush to Grab the OpenAI of the Physical World

Investors flock to a physical AI startup as the race for the "OpenAI of the physical world" heats up. Ji Jia Shi Jie (GigaWorld), a company dedicated to developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the physical world, has raised 3.5 billion RMB (approximately $490 million) in just three months, according to a report from investment media outlet Touzijie. The latest B2 funding round of 1 billion RMB attracted a wide range of top-tier investors, including sovereign wealth funds, industrial capital, and financial institutions. This brings the total funding for the young company, now valued over 10 billion RMB, to 3.5 billion RMB across three recent rounds. The company is led by Huang Guan, a post-90s Tsinghua University PhD with extensive experience in AI, autonomous driving, and entrepreneurship. Its core innovation is a "dual-pyramid" system comprising a five-layer data pyramid (from internet videos to real-world robot data) and a three-layer algorithm pyramid focused on world simulation, action alignment, and reinforcement learning. This system underpins its key models: the "World Action Model" (e.g., GigaBrain series for robot control) and the "World Generation Model" (e.g., GigaWorld series for simulating and understanding the physical world). Its models have reportedly achieved top rankings in global robotics benchmarks. Ji Jia Shi Jie argues that while current digital AGI excels in information processing, the next frontier is physical AGI—systems that can understand and interact with the real world. The company believes the field is approaching its "GPT-3 moment," a key inflection point in capability scaling. To achieve this, the company is pursuing a dual-market strategy. For the consumer (C) market, it launched the "SeeLight" brand and its S1 general-purpose humanoid robot, which has secured initial orders for deployment in real homes. For the business (B) market, it focuses on industrial automation with its Maker series robots, having signed agreements for large-scale deployment in factories, and its DriveDreamer world model for autonomous driving, which is already in use with over 30 automakers and tech companies. The report concludes that by bridging the gap between digital intelligence and physical action, Ji Jia Shi Jie aims to unlock a new wave of productivity, ultimately bringing physical AGI into everyday life.

marsbit1h ago

Three Months, 35 Billion Yuan: Investors Rush to Grab the OpenAI of the Physical World

marsbit1h ago

What's the Connection Between Pinduoduo's Huang Zheng and Blockchain?

This text explores the unexpected connection between Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang and blockchain, as suggested in his article *Turning Capitalism Upside Down*. Huang argues Pinduoduo's core business is about managing "uncertainty." He posits that wealth flows to the rich because they absorb life's uncertainties (e.g., illness, job loss) that devastate the poor, who pay a premium for certainty through insurance or stable prices. Pinduoduo's model attempts a "reverse insurance": by aggregating consumer demand via group-buying and flash sales, it creates a large, predictable order for manufacturers. This certainty allows factories to remove risk premiums, passing savings back as lower prices, thus partially reversing the wealth flow. The key obstacle, Huang notes, is that an individual's buying intent is an unreliable promise. He then asks if blockchain is the natural solution for this "reverse insurance." The text elaborates that blockchain, through smart contracts with binding deposits, could transform casual intent into a costly-to-break, enforceable commitment. This replaces interpersonal trust with coded rules, making promises credible, pricable, and resistant to fraud. Finally, the author draws a parallel to Bitcoin, framing two paths to creating certainty: the "Pinduoduo path" of aggregating decentralized will into scale, and the "Bitcoin path" of locking rules into immutable code. Both sacrifice something—personal freedom or system flexibility—to manufacture trust and predictability.

链捕手2h ago

What's the Connection Between Pinduoduo's Huang Zheng and Blockchain?

链捕手2h ago

Trading

Spot

Futures