The long-awaited Ethereum Merge finally happened. Many people had different opinions about this historic upgrade, which was the most anticipated in crypto history. Some of the reactions to the upgrade were negative.
After the Paris upgrade was officially concluded, also known as the Merge. The Ethereum network moved from PoW into PoS. It was the confluence of two distinct layers: the execution layer (PoW Chain), and the consensus layer (Beacon Chain).
There is no immediate volatility with the Ethereum Merge
Although many in crypto have expected that the Ethereum transition would cause volatility, this isn’t the case. Price of Ethereum coins has not been affected by the upgrade. All of the Ether community hoped that ETH merging would help Ethereum grow; instead, it is below.
It’s pretty unclear if Ethereum could sustain its value in the post-merge period as the price of ETH gradually drops. Ether currently trades at $1.428, which is a decrease of 3% in 24 hours.
Also, Ethereum Classic suffered a drop in performance after Merge. ETC advanced to the $40 level. The token’s price has been dropping throughout trading hours. ETC hovers around $33.19 at press time. This is a drop of 9.39% in 24 hours.
Others altcoins have been slowly recovering their original values. ADA and XRP are among the top altcoins with larger caps in the green.
A few large-cap altcoins, such as DOT or BNB, were already showing signs of trouble with a small drop. BNB however is still trending sideways.
Bitcoin Price Drops Below $20,000
Although Ethereum is struggling to hold its value following the Merge it’s not the same for Bitcoin. BTC’s price is in turmoil and has fallen below $20k.
The primary cryptocurrency had a market dominance of $22,800 in the last few days. Its recovery was faster than that of most altcoins. However, the US CPI data August 2018 showed that the sustainability was quickly reversed.
Within hours following the announcement, BTC’s price dropped by over $2,000. Bitcoin’s return to $20,000 remains a difficult task.
Gradually BTC fell to $19600 on Friday, marking a five-day low. This led to several market liquidations that totaled $200 million. Bitcoin trades at $19620 as of the writing of this article, indicating a 0.3% drop in value over the last few hours.
Featured image taken from Pixabay. Chart from TradingView.com