Culper Research announced a short position on ETH and related securities, citing damage to the token economic model following the Fusaka upgrade.

PANews reported on March 6 that short-selling firm Culper Research announced a short position on Ethereum and ETH-related securities, including BMNR. The firm believes that the ETH token economic model has been damaged following the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025. The upgrade increased the gas cap to 45-60 million, and while a 10-30% decrease in gas fees was expected, it actually decreased by approximately 90%. Furthermore, Vitalik and validators' calculations of L1 demand elasticity are based on an outdated model with an error margin of 3-9 times.

Culper refutes Tom Lee's bullish view. Lee cites the growth in active addresses and transaction volume as evidence of strengthening ETH's fundamentals and institutional adoption, but Culper's analysis shows that on-chain data from January 2025 to February 2026 indicates that this activity is actually driven by a low-value transaction surge triggered by address poisoning and dust attacks. Following the Fusaka upgrade, 95% of new wallets were created through dust attacks, and the number of poisoning attacks increased more than threefold, accounting for over 50% of ETH transaction growth and currently representing 22.5% of all ETH transactions. Culper claims that Vitalik is aware of this and is selling off, predicting further declines in ETH.