With everyone talking about The Merge, Kyle McDonald, an independent crypto researcher and artist, said that the big move from Ethereum will cause Bitcoin price action to collapse. He cited that transfer from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake will make BTC’s technology feel obsolete.
According to him, users can enjoy having to mine ETH via staking without the massive negative impact on energy consumption. At the same time, Bitcoin’s reliance on high-powered mining computers will become unnecessary. Unless BTC developers adapt to PoS, Bitcoin’s influence in the market may weaken, causing another altcoin season and potentially turning Ethereum into the number one cryptocurrency.
The long-awaited Ethereum Merge has begun, although the adoption will take several days. What happened on September 6, 2022, was just a “preparation phase” for the altcoin to transition. According to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, September 6 is the Bellatrix hard fork. This update is “when the Ethereum Epoch value is anticipated to rise to 144,896 on the proof-of-stake chain,” as the LiveMint report states.
McDonald Recommends Selling Bitcoin and Buy Ethereum
For Kyle McDonald, cryptocurrency’s energy consumption made up the system’s biggest flaw, not the volatile prices. Governments, environmental activists, and private companies have pointed out Bitcoin’s problems of heightened electricity bills, scalped graphics cards, and illegal activities.
With Ethereum leaving its original proof-of-work method, this could turn the market upside down between it and Bitcoin. He said that BTC’s reach to $69,000 will never happen again, especially now that the altcoin competition keeps heating up.
In an interview with CoinDesk, he elaborated on the problems of GPU-based mining PCs.
“When you’re moving from a system that is about generating as many random numbers as fast as possible with 10 million [graphic processing units] across the world to a system that’s running on a few thousand computers that are pretty low energy, it’s going to make a huge difference,” McDonald said.
Fear Constantly Looms in Bitcoin
Since the crypto winter struck in December 2021, the market has been breaking negative records, including the worst bear market in crypto history, the most significant losses through hacks, and one of the most disastrous altcoins collapses.
The large crashes factor from several events, including the intervention of governments to regulate the exchanges and firms that overlook the movement of transactions, several crypto firms declaring bankruptcy, the Terra collapse, and the Ukrainian war.
Uncertainties also loom due to some of the large companies’ decisions, such as Tesla selling its BTC, the decline of NFTs’ value, underwhelming feedback of people towards Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse, Blackrock partnering with Coinbase, and Ripple joining the ranks of the World Economic Forum.
To many, the Ethereum Merge is the much-needed white swan for the crypto market. This move will prove that cryptocurrency is here to stay without the consequences of significant energy consumption. If Kyle McDonald’s prediction is accurate, BTC will never hit $69,000 and beyond ever. At the same time, as Ethereum constantly rises, we may see a new turning point for the two most prominent cryptocurrencies.
However, even with everyone concentrating on what will happen to the market after The Merge, it may not mean that Bitcoin will never innovate. To others, BTC is just uneventful so far. MarketVector digital product strategist Martin Leinweber said,
“Bitcoin is not dead. It’s boring now, so traders are already looking for alternatives.”
