Hold onto your butts, because The Merge day has arrived. Crypto rainbows, llama unicorns and flying saucers to the moon? Actually, it’ll be “probably nothing”, reckons Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.
Speaking with Bloomberg’s Crypto channel, Lubin expressed high confidence in a successful Merge (of Ethereum’s protocol to a tree-hugging Proof-of-Stake model) and that he thinks “it’ll be probably nothing”.
And that’s a sarcastically playful term used by crypto types to indicate something that actually is, well, something big.
“We think it’ll be enormously impactful,” Lubin qualified, “but it’ll also be likely nothing, in the sense that there will be no disruption that’s going to be experienced by end users.”
Yeah, cool. What about the price of ETH then? Well, of course he didn’t give any predictions on that, but here’s what he did say about where he thinks The Merge stands in the history of cryptocurrency…
“There have been two major events so far… the advent of Bitcoin, and the development of Ethereum – a much more programmable and expressive blockchain technology. [The Merge] slots in as number three, in my opinion.”
Let’s take a look at some price action…
Top 10 overview
With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.04 trillion and up about 1% since yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.
The UNIVERSE’s leading smart-contract layer 1 blockchain, Ethereum (ETH) is leading the 24-hour… let’s not call it a “charge”… more of a desperate claw back up the cliff crypto fell off the other day.
Part of the excitement around the Merge is the fact the new-improved Ethereum “Beacon chain” blockchain will now be using 99% less energy, as well as providing greater scalability and security.
Kind of a big deal in the long run, then. Set to actually finish merging around 3pm AEST today, the Merge requires ETH holders to basically do absolutely nothing. It’ll be like an “iPhone upgrade” that just happens overnight, said Joe Lubin.
And that’s an important thing to remember, as there will no doubt be scammers galore trying to fleece your precious ETH from you with BS upgrade nonsense, fake airdrops and bogus staking-pool crap. Don’t get suckered in to any of it!
As for predicted price action… a lot of analysts have been expecting a “sell the news” occurrence, so don’t be at all surprised if ETH dumps. But then again, it’s the old “expect the unexpected” as well.
There is reportedly a hell of a lot of shorting action going on with ETH traders right now, so perhaps a short squeeze isn’t completely out of the question.
Things could be about to get volatile… again… or maybe it really will be closer to the literal meaning of “probably nothing”. This fence we’re sitting on is starting to feel a little uncomfortable, though.
Meanwhile, as for Bitcoin, it was looking a little shaky a few hours ago, having dipped back below the psychological (and technical) level of US$20k, but found some support once again around US$19,800.
Long-term Bitcoin bull Willy Woo – a Kiwi on-chain data guru of some standing within the crypto industry – was throwing out some caution overnight, however. Essentially, he thinks BTC hasn’t bottomed yet and is pointing to a, frankly pretty scary, possibility that it could be set to plunge as low as US$9,100 if the market gets a “max pain” repeat.
Something to consider, while keeping in mind Willy Woo, as clever as he seems, has actually been wrong plenty of times before when it comes to Bitcoin-related musings.
Uppers and downers: 11–100
Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.1 billion to about US$422 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)
DAILY PUMPERS
• Celsius (CEL), (market cap: US$790 million) +28%
• Ravencoin (RVN), (mc: US$791 million) +11%
• Ethereum Classic (ETC), (mc: US$5.3 billion) +10%
• Evmos (EVMOS), (mc: US$861 million) +8%
• Rocket Pool (RPL), (mc: US$580 million) +6%
DAILY SLUMPERS
• Terra (LUNA), (market cap: US$487 million) -31%
• Terra Luna Classic (LUNC), (mc: US$2 billion) -19%
• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$537 million) -8%
• Radix (RDX), (mc: US$646 million) -3%
• ApeCoin (APE), (mc: US$1.59 billion) -2%
Around the blocks
A selection of randomness and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse…
You want some esoteric Merge nerdiness? Probably not, but here you go anyway…
And to finish, the following isn’t Merge related, but we saw it and had to post anyway. (There is an Ethereum gas-fee connection to be made there somewhere, however… which probably won’t be going down any time soon, by the way.)