The short-seller report that just dropped on Ethereum is absolutely brutal, and it is sparking a massive debate across the timeline.
Culper Research, a well-known aggressive short-selling firm, just announced they are officially shorting Ethereum and ETH-proxy stocks like BitMine. Their core argument is that Ethereum's highly anticipated "Fusaka" upgrade from December 2025 completely broke the network's tokenomics.
Here is exactly what they are claiming. The Fusaka upgrade increased the Layer-1 gas limit from 45 million to 60 million, which flooded the network with excess blockspace. This caused transaction fees to crater by roughly 90%. While cheap fees sound great for retail users, Culper argues it is fatal for network security. Because validators earn a chunk of their income from those fees, the massive drop is heavily compressing staking yields. Culper is warning that this creates a negative feedback loop—a "death spiral"—where lower yields kill staking demand, which ultimately weakens the entire security of the chain.
The report also takes a direct shot at BitMine Chairman Tom Lee. Lee has been arguing that the network is stronger than ever because active addresses and transaction counts are going up. But Culper fired back, claiming that this volume is completely fake utility. According to their on-chain analysis, since the Fusaka upgrade made blockspace so cheap, the network has been flooded with "dusting" and "address poisoning" scams. They estimate that a massive chunk of this new activity is just attackers sending tiny amounts of crypto to trick users with fake wallet addresses, rather than actual organic growth.
To make things even more dramatic, Culper pointed out that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently sold nearly 20,000 ETH this year, worth around $40 million. The firm is using this as proof that Vitalik supposedly knows the tokenomics are broken and is cashing out. However, Vitalik's father immediately fired back on social media, calling the short-sellers "attention-seeking clowns" and dismissing the accusations as pure nonsense.
Either way, with BitMine allegedly sitting on roughly $7.4 billion in unrealized losses from their massive 4.4 million ETH treasury, this short report is putting intense pressure on the Ethereum ecosystem right now.
Disclaimer: Short-seller reports can cause severe market volatility. This analysis is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Always manage your risk.
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