Culper Research published a short report on Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) on Thursday, calling its economics “impaired” and warning the network may be entering a “death spiral.”
The short seller also accused Fundstrat’s Tom Lee of “throwing good money after bad” through his ETH treasury company BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE:BMNR).
The report’s title says it all: “What Vitalik Knows, and Tom Lee Doesn’t.”
What Happened
In the short report, Culper says the Fusaka upgrade was supposed to cut transaction fees by 10-30%.
Instead, fees collapsed by roughly 90%, gutting the EIP-1559 burn mechanism that once made ETH deflationary.
The firm says Vitalik and validators “miscalculated Layer-1 demand elasticity by 3-9x based on outdated math.”
Staking yields have fallen below U.S. Treasuries.
The firm analyzed every ETH transaction from January 2025 through February 2026 …