VC Throws Shade: ’Fees Are Flat’ Casts Doubt on Tom Lee’s $60K Ethereum Prediction

Wall Street's crypto clairvoyant faces skepticism as venture capital pushes back against rosy projections.

The Fee Factor

While Lee paints $60K targets, critics point to stubborn transaction costs undermining Ethereum's growth narrative. The network's fee structure remains a sticking point for institutional adoption.

VCs Versus Visionaries

Seasoned investors counter bullish forecasts with cold-hard metrics. They're betting on infrastructure over hype—another case of finance guys preferring spreadsheets to crystal balls.

Market Reality Check

Price predictions collide with on-chain data as Ethereum struggles to shake its 'rich man's blockchain' reputation. The gap between analyst optimism and network economics keeps widening.

Maybe traditional finance and crypto prophets should compare notes before making bold claims—or at least check the gas fees first.

Key Takeaways 

Why does a VC believe Lee’s bullish projection is ‘retarted’?

Andrew Kang argued that the tokenized market has already exploded 1000x, but hasn’t boosted ETH

Will ETH drop to $1K per Kang’s projection? 

The future is hard to predict. But a crucial ETH support and realized price for accumulation addresses was at $2.8K. 

A VC partner has projected that the ethereum [ETH] price could remain range-bound between $1K-$4K for an extended period, discrediting Fundstrat CIO Tom Lee’s bullish thesis and $60K price target.

In an X (formerly Twitter) post on the 24th of September, Andrew Kang, a partner at Mechanism Capital, called Lee’s projection ‘retarded.’ 

He downplayed Lee’s positive ETH outlook based on tokenization and stablecoin narratives.

He added that the tokenized market has grown, 1000x since 2020, but daily transaction fees on Ethereum have remained at a five-year low. 

“Tom’s argument fundamentally misunderstands how value accrual works and may lead you to believe that fees WOULD scale proportionally, but in fact, they are practically at the same level of  2020.”

Source: X

Banks won’t buy ETH, says Kang

Kang added that large banks and institutions haven’t bought ETH and won’t make a bid in the future, as Lee expects. He drew parallels with oil, adding that banks only ‘pay for it when they need it.’

For the unfamiliar, crypto treasury firms led by Lee’s BitMine have accumulated $21 billion worth of the ETH, partly driven by the expected stablecoin and tokenization boom.

In fact, this new demand line lifted ETH from $1.5K to nearly $5K in 2025, about a 200% rally. Hence, more demand from such institutions could boost the ecosystem. 

But Kang was right on one thing – other blockchains will capture the tokenization boom. In fact, the growing competition from stablecoin-focused chains with more distribution channels could eat into ETH’s market share. 

Even so, it may be too early for the bearish bet for ETH. In fact, earlier in the year, Kang projected that ETH could slip below $1K; instead, the altcoin rallied 3x. 

That said, ETH accumulation addresses have hit a record high of 27.3 million ETH. Coupled with a looming supply crunch, the backdrop could be positive for ETH. This could raise the odds for a $5K price target. 

Source: CryptoQuant 

However, in the case of an extreme bearish scenario as projected by Kang, the key support to watch would be $2.8K.

It doubled as the realized price for accumulation addresses and stopped the H1 2025 pullback. 

Source: CryptoQuant