Ever since ‘The Merge’ has been revealed, the prices for Ethereum have been fueling up. Ethereum is attracting more and more investors raising the value of Ethereum drastically. The prices for Ethereum have risen by more than 50% in the month of July after the announcement of the merge.
This has been catching the attention of all cryptocurrency traders all around the globe. In the month of June Ethereum reached 1800$ since then Ethereum is constantly dipping and rising to maintain a $ 1500 mark.
As on 3 August 2022, Bitcoin is priced at :
1 BTC = 23,265.66 $
As on 3 August 2022, Ethereum is priced at :
1 ETH = 1,657.71 $
After this, many investors are believing that the second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum might overtake or will give hardcore competition to the all-time high reigning coin Bitcoin.
What is the Merge?
According to the information provided by the Ethereum website, the current Ethereum Mainnet will soon merge with the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake system replacing proof-of-work for Ethereum.
The Ethereum website described the Merge as “The Merge is one of the most significant upgrades in the history of Ethereum. Extensive testing and bug bounties were undertaken to ensure a safe transition to a proof-of-stake system.”
https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/
The developers have announced the release date for the Merge on 19 September 2022.
The Merge will bring significant changes to the Ethereum blockchain network. For example – The Ethereum Blockchain enables the deployment of smart contacts and development of Dapps or decentralized apps to be run without any fraud, control, and interference from the third party allowing more transparency.
Currently, the blockchain processes the transactions and builds the block based on a proof-of-work system. From 19 September 2022 (hopefully), the blockchain will work on a proof-of-stake system.
The new Merge will reduce the Ethereum energy consumption by 95.95% this will also make Ethereum an environment-friendly blockchain. Presently the carbon footprint for Ethereum is 47.43 Mt CO2 annually where each transaction produces about 105.98 kg of CO2.
There’s no limit on how many Ethereum can be mined, however, in bitcoin 19 million bitcoin have already been mined and only 2 million are left. In such circumstances, Bitcoin will become a rare currency in the future. Vitallik quoted that in the future Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second.
Will Ethereum take over Bitcoin?
This has been on the mind of all the cryptocurrency traders, whether or not Ethereum takes over Bitcoin. Many experts have said that Ethereum might take over Bitcoin in the medium term because of the new Merge.
Ethereum researcher Vivek Raman said, “after the merge, a set of major changes will be brought within Ethereum blockchain and transaction system that will help Ethereum in the long run, Ethereum supply will be affected in a positive way and the merge will also make Ethereum environmentally sustainable.”
He also quoted that “Ethereum does have a chance to flip and takeover the bitcoin in economic terms. After the merge, Ethereum will have a lower inflation rate than that of Bitcoin, and with the fee burns Ethereum will be a deflationary token and bitcoin will be an inflationary token. And deflationary tokens always rise in value with time whereas inflationary tokens keep losing value because the supply exceeds demand.
Ethereum has been showcasing a strong fight in terms of value with Bitcoin for the past 2-3 weeks. That has lightened the hopes for the Ethereum miners that wish Ethereum to overtake Bitcoin. If Bitcoin does not leap high in prices by the end of this year, it could be possible that Ethereum might take over the reign in the future.
