Can The Merge Allow Ether To Overtake Bitcoin’s Crown?

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There will probably be more democratic votes counted for whether Ether can overtake Bitcoin’s crown than for who can take the British one, with all due respect for the new King Charles.

Although Ether is still a long way off from becoming the ultimate crypto coin, a future moment which the crypto fans refer to as ‘the flippening’, it is clear that a successful ‘Merge’ would allow Ether to be seen as a more reliable future network than Bitcoin.

With The Merge now underway, crypto fans also witness the growing dominance of Ether. Whereas Bitcoin had a 47.5% share of the total value of the crypto market at this year’s peak (in mid-June), it has since slipped to 39%. Meanwhile Ether, the second biggest coin, has seen it’s share grow from 16% to 20.5%.

Black Swan

The Merge, the switch from proof of work to proof of stake for Ether, is a transformation that Bitcoin can’t perform because the Bitcoin blockchain won’t change anymore.

This also means that “people are now viewing Ethereum as essentially a safe asset because they’ve seen the success of the network, they think it’s not going anywhere,” explained Joseph Edwards, head of financial strategy at fund management firm Solrise Finance to Reuters.

On the other hand, The Merge is also said to come with a great deal of risk, simple because it’s never been done before. As software engineer Stephen Diehl explains in the FT this week, people who are considering investing in crypto markets think twice, because:

There is this underlying platform risk where, unlike with physical commodities, crypto assets can simply cease to exist due to technical black swan events.

Today’s Financial Times front page features Ethereum’s #Merge #Ethereum @vicoxlegal pic.twitter.com/WFes8TWt2Q

— Vicente Ortiz (@vicente_o) September 13, 2022

Be that as it may, if the Merge is indeed successful and Ethereum becomes the first major crypto coin able to ditch the negative climate record, analysts will be left to wonder why they don’t switch from Bitcoin to Ethereum indeed.

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