Mechanism Capital co-founder Andrew Kang escalated his critique of Tom Lee’s newest Ethereum funding case with an unusually blunt tirade on X, interlacing his rebuttal with a sequence of sharply worded assertions and data-driven claims. “Tom Lee’s ETH thesis is among the most retarded combos of financially illiterate arguments I’ve seen from a well-known analyst shortly,” Kang wrote, earlier than itemizing 5 pillars he says underpin Lee’s view: “(1) Stablecoin & RWA adoption; (2) Digital oil comparability; (3) Establishments will purchase and stake ETH; (4) ETH will probably be equal to all monetary infrastructure firms; (5) Technical evaluation.”
Is Tom Lee’s Ethereum Thesis Retarded?
Kang’s central attack targets the concept that rising tokenization and stablecoin exercise ought to translate into outsized payment seize for Ethereum. “Since 2020, tokenized asset worth and stablecoin transaction volumes have elevated 100–1000x… [but] charges are virtually on the similar stage as in 2020,” he argued. He attributed the disconnect to “Ethereum community upgrades making tx’s extra environment friendly,” exercise shifting “to different chains,” and the truth that “tokenizing low-velocity property doesn’t drive a lot charges.” He distilled the purpose with a stark comparability: “Somebody might tokenize a $100m bond and if it trades as soon as each 2 years… A single USDT would generate extra charges.”
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The Mechanism Capital associate pushed the aggressive angle additional. “A lot of the charges will probably be captured by different blockchains with stronger enterprise improvement groups,” he wrote, naming “Solana, Arbitrum, and Tempo” as seeing “many of the early large wins,” and including that “Tether is supporting two new Tether chains, Plasma and Secure,” explicitly meant to route USDT quantity to Tether-controlled rails.
Kang additionally dismissed Lee’s “digital oil” framing as analytically hole. “Oil is a commodity… actual oil costs adjusted for inflation have been buying and selling in the identical vary for over a century with periodic spikes that revert… I agree ETH may very well be considered as a commodity, however that’s not bullish,” he wrote.
He prolonged the vary analogy on to Ether’s chart: “ this chart objectively, the strongest statement is that Ethereum is in a multi-year vary… we lately tapped the top quality, failing to interrupt resistance… I’d not low cost the potential for a for much longer $1,000–$4,800 vary.” On relative efficiency, he added: “Lengthy-term ETH/BTC is certainly in a multi-year vary, however the previous few years have largely been dictated by a downtrend… The ethereum narrative is saturated and fundamentals don’t justify valuation development.”
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On establishments, Kang argued that Lee’s premise—that banks and huge corporates will accumulate and stake ETH to safe tokenization networks or as working capital—misunderstands treasury habits and worth accrual. “Have massive banks… purchased ETH on their steadiness sheet but? No. Have any of them introduced plans to? Additionally no… Do banks top off on barrels of gasoline as a result of they regularly pay for vitality? No… Do banks purchase shares of asset custodians they use? No,” he wrote, calling the concept that staking demand from incumbents would underpin valuation a class error.
Kang’s thread culminated in a withering evaluation of Ethereum’s pricing dynamics: “Ethereum’s valuation comes primarily from monetary illiteracy… [which] can create a decently massive market cap… However the valuation that may be derived from monetary illiteracy isn’t infinite… Until there’s main organizational change it’s probably destined to indefinite underperformance.”
Lee’s newest outlook, against this, has emphasised Ethereum’s suitability for Wall Road tokenization and its position as a “impartial chain,” with public targets clustered around $10,000–$12,000 by end-2025 and up to $62,500 in a positive super-cycle.
At publication time, ETH traded close to $4,000.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com