Recently, there has been an extremely interesting debate on crypto social media. On one side is Tom Lee, a Wall Street heavyweight, bullish on Ethereum. On the other is Andrew Kang, co-founder of Mechanism Capital, who directly fired back, saying the other party’s logic is basically “retarded.” The most brilliant part, though, is the way Tom Lee responded.

Tom Lee previously put forward a bold prediction: that Ethereum’s fair value could surge to $60,000. His main reasons were tokenization, institutional adoption, and the growth of stablecoins. Sounds persuasive, right? But Andrew Kang wasn’t buying it.

Andrew Kang took to X and posted a long critique attacking Tom Lee, laying out five reasons to refute him. First, he pointed out that over the years, the size of stablecoins and tokenized assets has grown by a hundredfold—or even a thousandfold—yet Ethereum’s protocol revenue has barely moved. Why? Because after Ethereum upgrades, transaction efficiency improved, which actually lowered fees. And chains like Solana and Arbitrum are stealing most of the stablecoin and RWA activity. Andrew Kang even gave an example: after $100 million worth of bond tokenization, if it’s traded only once every two years, its contribution to Ethereum might be just $0.1—whereas USDT created via high-frequency trading generates more transaction fees.

Second, Andrew Kang thinks the analogy of comparing Ethereum to “digital oil” doesn’t hold up at all. In the real world, oil prices—after inflation adjustments—have, for over a century, fluctuated within a broad range and have never experienced unlimited linear growth. So even if you treat it as a commodity, that still doesn’t provide a case for being bullish.

Andrew Kang also punctured the claim that institutions are buying Ethereum. Tom Lee said that large institutions, in order to develop tokenization businesses, will in the future buy and stake Ethereum as operational capital. But Andrew Kang countered with a question: would banks hoard gasoline because they need to pay energy bills? No—they only pay when they need it. Would banks buy shares in the custody firms whose services they use for the assets they hold? No. So this logic simply doesn’t work.

On the technical side, Andrew Kang pointed out that Ethereum is still stuck in a long-term wide consolidation range of $1,000 to $4,800 (current price $2.34K). While it has recently touched the upper edge of the range, it hasn’t been able to break out effectively—so the technical picture is actually bearish. Andrew Kang’s conclusion is that Ethereum’s current valuation largely comes from investors’ lack of financial common sense.

In the face of such sharp criticism, Tom Lee’s response at Token2049 was flawless. He said that in the world of crypto, “Retarded” is actually a compliment, so he took Andrew Kang’s words as praise. He even joked that he’s a “ETH-tarded fan” (I'm ETH-tarded). That line is a double entendre, cleverly turning an insult into a sort of synonym for “anti-consensus” and “sticking to one’s faith” within the crypto community—so the room erupted on the spot.

Interestingly, public opinion in the community overwhelmingly supported Tom Lee. People weren’t discussing the technical details of his argument—they were talking about his past boldness and market instincts. Some said that when the market crashed sharply in April, Tom Lee was the only one brave enough to publicly call for a V-shaped rebound on television, and just that alone deserved respect. Others said Tom Lee’s advantage is that he knows who is buying coins and can incorporate macro factors like demographic structure.

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