Merge will silence critics & propel Ethereum past Bitcoin
By: Marius Ciubotariu, co-founder of Hubble Protocol
“This week witnesses one of the most significant events in cryptocurrency history. Finally, years after founder Vitalik Buterin floated the idea, Ethereum is moving to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
The importance of this event, dubbed the “merge”, can’t be understated. The Ethereum Merge is a gigantic technical undertaking to upgrade the network and is an essential step towards building out Etheruem 2.0. Additionally, it will reduce carbon emissions on the network by a reported 99%.
For most of the crypto community, the former is perhaps more important, but for the rest of the world, the latter is likely more significant. Carbon emissions are frequently the stick with which traditional finance and global regulators like to beat cryptocurrency, and so this new development will take the fuel out of that fire at least.
Of course, emissions remain a huge issue for bitcoin, which is using ever more energy to mine the last one million coins left and has little to no chance of moving to a PoS model anytime soon. For bitcoin mining to survive the regulators, its energy future must perhaps be renewable. But we digress.
See more: Ethereum: Why traders might sell ETH/USD even on a successful Merge this week
For those most concerned with price, this is a very exciting time for the merge to happen as bitcoin’s price is struggling to hold onto its psychologically important $20,000 level. Already we are starting to see some significant divergence in growth between the two flagship cryptocurrencies, with ETH up an incredible 51% over 90 days to September 12, while Bitcoin is down 4.5% over the same period (as of September 12, 2022).
Over six months and one-year things are quite similar, with bitcoin down 45%, and 55% and Ether down 32% and 51% respectively. So while over the long term the pair continue to track each other and wider markets, over the shorter term Ether is starting to truly fly on its own steam. Indeed, the merge could bring about the long prophesied “flippening” – when Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin in market capitalization.
Even if the merge is nothing more than a damp squib for the price of Ether, as long as there are no major hiccups, there’s no reason to expect this trend to reverse. It could be that the world, including cryptocurrency traders, are finally waking up to the huge potential that exists in Ethereum and the possibilities provided by decentralized finance projects beyond bitcoin. It’s a really exciting time to be in the space and we look forward to watching the progress of the merge from here.”
