Kategorie: Ethereum News

Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, believes that Ethereum’s Merge will be rocky in its early days but will be beneficial to the broader ecosystem in the long term.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, and Anthony Scaramucci, SkyBridge Capital founder, granted an interview to CNBC earlier today, discussing several topics, including the upcoming Ethereum Merge.

The Ethereum Merge will see the Ethereum blockchain transition from a proof of work (PoW) mechanism to a proof of stake (PoS). The move is designed to make the Ethereum network faster, more scalable, more environmentally friendly and less expensive to use.

While commenting on the Ethereum Merge, Bankman-Fried said;

“I think long term it is going to be exciting for the Ethereum community. It is going to allow substantially faster and cheaper processing of transactions. However, I do think that it is going to be, as big other transitions are at the beginning, rocky. I think there is going to be some messy activity around when it happens. That is inevitable.”

The FTX boss said in the Medium to long term, the Ethereum Merge will be helpful to the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem. 

When asked to explain what he meant by messy at the beginning, Bankman-Fried said not everyone in the Ethereum community is okay with the proof of stake mechanism and prefer the proof of work.

Furthermore, so many developers will need to update their software and sync to the new chain. Developers will also need to learn some new things to ensure that their protocols operate as initially designed. He said;

“I don’t think it is going to be a huge deal medium term, but it is a big transition, and with an entire decentralised ecosystem carrying out the transition at once, some people will flop it, and it will take some time to clean it up.”

Bankman-Fried said although it would work out fine for everybody, in the end, there would be some rough patches around the edges.  

Scaramucci added that despite the progress made in the cryptocurrency market, we are still early, and the market has a long way to grow from here. 

FTX is one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, recording massive growth over the past few years.

The post Ethereum’s Merge event will be rocky at the beginning, says FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried appeared first on CoinJournal.

The US subsidiary of Binance has today announced that it will introduce an Ethereum (ETH) staking program ahead of the upcoming Merge upgrade. The staking program will have an annual percentage yield (APY) of up to 6.0%.

Unlike direct staking on the Ethereum blockchain which normally requires one to have at least 32 ETH to participate, the Binance staking will only require a minimum of 0.001 ETH.

While commenting on the new development, the CEO of Binance Brian Shroder said:

“ETH plays a critical role in the broader Web3 ecosystem. As the Ethereum network continues to transition towards The Merge, we are thrilled to offer ETH staking with some of the highest APY rewards in the industry.”

The staking yields

The program’s staking yields will be in part enhanced by features like the Binance US’ automatic restake that allows for compounding of returns.

However, those who stake their ETH at the movement will not be able to unstake the ETH until Ethereum performs its first transaction on its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain once the Merge upgrade takes place.

The merge is slated to take place on September 15 although the high Ethereum hashrate may result in the upgrade happening earlier than expected. Users will be allowed to withdraw their staked ETH from the Ethereum network after another upgrade referred to as the “Shanghai Upgrade” which depends on the successful completion of the Merge upgrade.

Nevertheless, because of the complexity of the upcoming Merge upgrade, there is no guarantee of a smooth transition and users’ funds are subject to risks such as protracted return on the invested funds or loss of the funds in case the upgrade fails.

The post Binance US introduces Ethereum staking ahead of The Merge appeared first on CoinJournal.

The Ethereum Bellatrix upgrade, which kicks off the final countdown for the much-anticipated Merge upgrade, is now live.

ETH price shot above $1,678 minutes after the Bellatrix upgrade was activated. At press time, ETH price had, however, dropped to $1,598.80 almost eroding the gains made after the Bellatrix upgrade.

The Bellatrix upgrade has added impetus to the recovering Ether that had previously been struggling amid strong bearish headwinds.

What is the Bellatrix upgrade?

The Merge is a two-step process and the first step is the Bellatrix upgrade that was triggered by an epoch height. The second step is the Paris upgrade that will be triggered by the targeted Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000 expected to be reached between September 13^th and 15th.

Bellatrix is the last upgrade on Ethereum’s Beacon Chain before the Ethereum blockchain completely shifts from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (Pos). The Beacon Chain went live last year.

Currently, each Ethereum node is represented on two different layers, the main chain which is a proof-of-work layer and the C layer (consensus layer). The Merge is expected to combine these two layers and transition to a PoS-based blockchain.

Bellatrix upgrade will enable validators to start producing updated Beacon Blocks, which will then contain the codebase for the merging of the two layers.

The post Ethereum Network Bellatrix upgrade causes ETH price to spike appeared first on CoinJournal.

Ether is up by more than 6% in the last 24 hours as the Ethereum community gears for the upcoming Merge event.

ETH, the native coin of the Ethereum blockchain, is up by more than 6% in the last 24 hours. Thus, making it the best performer amongst the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Ether’s rally comes as the broader crypto market has been performing well over the last 24 hours. The total market cap currently stands around $1 trillion, up by more than 2% today.

Bitcoin continues to struggle to move past the $20k psychological level despite the broader crypto market performing well so far today. BTC has added more than 1% to its value in the last 24 hours.

Ether’s positive performance comes as the Ethereum community gets ready for the Merge event. The Merge event will see the Ethereum blockchain migrate from a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS).

The Merge is slated to take place between September 10-20, meaning that it is only a few days away. The transition is designed to make the Ethereum network faster, more scalable, and reduce the cost of transactions.

Key levels to watch

The ETH/USD 4-hour chart is bullish as Ether has been performing really well over the past 24 hours. ETH’s positive performance is better than the other major cryptocurrencies.

The MACD line crossed into the positive zone yesterday, a shift from the bearish tone the market had taken in recent days. 

The 14-day RSI of 67 shows that ETH is heading towards the overbought region if the rally can be sustained.

At press time, ETH is trading at $1,670 per coin. If the bulls remain in charge ahead of the Merge, ETH could surge past the $1,782 resistance level over the next few hours or days.

In the event of an extended bullish run, ETH could cross the $2,000 psychological level for the first time this month. 

The post Ether is up by more than 6% today as the Merge gets closer appeared first on CoinJournal.

Ethereum Merge is set to take place in a few days, and White Rock’s CEO believes it will lead to other coins experiencing an increase in miners.

The Ethereum network is set to transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism later this month. The move is designed to upgrade the Ethereum blockchain to make it faster, more scalable, and reduce the cost of transactions. 

However,  Andy Long, CEO of Bitcoin miner White Rock, told Cointelegraph in a recent interview that the transition is likely to flood the crypto industry with out-of-work ETH miners.

Long said Ethereum miners would be looking for greener pastures following the Merge event, and this will swamp other coins, increasing mining difficulty and reducing profitability. He added that;

“As GPU miners point their hardware at other chains, their difficulty will increase, causing lower returns and splitting the reward amongst more miners. Hashrate will flow to alternative GPU PoW coins, and many miners will simply give up and try to sell off their farms of cards.”

The CEO believes that the migration would likely force some cryptocurrency miners to give up and abandon their mining rigs.  He added that;

“Some miners will try to sell their High-Performance Computing (HPC) or GPU cloud services and will likely fail since there’s too much capacity chasing a limited amount of demand.”

In recent months, GPU prices have been declining, correlating with the decrease in the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As a result, some companies are selling their rigs below the list price, while sellers who maintained the normal prices are struggling to offload mining rigs and cards. 

Despite the upcoming Merge, Long said he is interested in seeing how the market forces play out in the long term. He said;

“When I was building GPU farms in 2017, the Merge was cited as an imminent threat and would have been much more impactful then. There will always be GPUs mining some GPU optimized chains, but I doubt we will return to the levels of revenue seen in ETH proof-of-work at its peak ever again.”

Ethereum’s Merge event is slated to happen between September 10-20 and is considered one of the most significant upgrades in the cryptocurrency market in 2022. 

The post Ethereum Merge to ‘swamp’ other coins with miners, says White Rock’s CEO appeared first on CoinJournal.