To recap, Su's main complaint with Etherium was that the fees were too high - especially against competitors like Avalanche, Solana, Fantom and so on. So he said he was giving up on ETH, well his company sold off the cryptocurrency.

Overall, the problem of high commissions in Etherium is still an issue. Specifically, a regular ETH transfer now costs the equivalent of $6.6, while sending another blockchain-based token costs $20. Finally, an exchange transaction on the decentralised Uniswap exchange will cost $63.

Commissions on the Etherium network

Although the high fees in ETH haven’t gone anywhere, Su has reconsidered his attitude to blockchain. At the very least, his company has re-invested in ethers – and here’s why.

How cryptocurrencies are bought

In a series of tweets between 20 and 22 November, Zhu wrote why he had “given up on Ethereum despite having supported the project in the past”. His comments were left in response to a tweet from Synthetix founder Kane Warwick, who criticised investors for changing their minds in pursuit of profits. Zhu stated his dissatisfaction with the high fees on the Etherium network and criticised the cryptocurrency developers’ strategy.

Here’s a line that has already become legendary – and for both critics of Etherium and the cryptocurrency community at large.

Yes, I have abandoned Etherium, even though I have supported it in the past. Yes, Etherium has also abandoned its users, even though it has supported them in the past. This idea of sitting back and masturbating, watching ETH burn [as commissions – editor’s note] and coming up with new purity tests while newcomers can’t afford to use this blockchain, is terrible.

A little later, he publicly apologised, noting that he “may have been too harsh in his remarks”. However, things have already taken a turn for the worse – the comments from the head of a major crypto fund have caused a veritable storm of emotions in the cryptocurrency community. And there were those who supported the investor’s remarks, as well as representatives of Efirium, who took to defending the project.

However, 17 days after Soo Joo’s tweets, Three Arrows Capital’s wallet received about 156,400 ETH worth $676.37 million. The coin transactions came from the Binance, FTX and Coinbase exchanges, according to Cointelegraph. In other words, the crypto fund has clearly acquired Etherium – and it wasn’t just the distribution of cryptocurrency to its wallets.

Etherium inflows to the 3AC wallet from the FTX exchange

Su himself reacted to the event, among other things. Here’s his comment.

Guys, I couldn’t let you masturbate and watch the coin burn without me. Ethereum is still unrecognisable to newbies: if you don’t believe me, show the blockchain to your grandmother. I’ll pay off any panic collapses like the one over the weekend. Generally speaking, 100k ethereum is dust considering how much it’s worth. There’s more to come.

What was Zhu’s motive really? Many crypto-enthusiasts believe he criticised Etherium in order to accelerate the price rise of the Avalanche (AVAX) project, which is one of the altcoin’s main competitors due to its low fees and high transfer rate. AVAX is also on the 3AC wallets, so this version is quite plausible.

AVAX price change over the last 30 days

On top of that, AVAX is the only cryptocurrency mentioned in Zhu’s Twitter profile description. As noted there, Su “invests in AVAX, cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance and NFT tokens”.

Twitter profile description of 3AC chief Su Zhu


We believe that Su's actions were hardly deliberate manipulation. It is more likely that the decision to get rid of ethers was an emotional one against the backdrop of too high fees on the network. And after a few days, given the collapse of the market, ETH seemed too attractive an asset for a hedge fund. That's easy enough to understand: after all, blockchain is still waiting to transition to version 2.0 tentatively next year, which could very well affect the value of the asset. It is the latter factor that the fund's staff are primarily concerned with.

Be that as it may, the case clearly proves that one should not blindly follow the recommendations of even the most reputable personalities in the crypto industry. They may change their minds - without even communicating it - and buy back a coin's slump in value. And blaming them for their unprofitable selling is probably not an option.

You can find more interesting information about digital assets in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. There we will talk about other topics related to blockchain and decentralisation.