The integration and adoption of cryptocurrency is likely to accelerate as Ethereum transitions from proof of work to proof of stake as it will make Ethereum’s ecosystem more attractive to investors in the short term and more scalable for users in the long term.
Ethereum’s Bellatrix upgrade should be taking place within the next 24 hours and some would say that this marks the start of the actual merge which could now occur as soon as the 14th of September according to Ultrasound Money.
some sources estimate that the merge could occur as soon as the 13th of September which would be fascinating as it’s the same day that the inflation figures for August will be released in the United States.
depending on how those look they could either supercharge or dampen any positive price action.
regardless the Ethereum merge is little more than a week away and this means you must prepare yourself accordingly if you hold ETH or any ERC20 tokens.
in practical terms this means asking yourself whether you want to huddle or trade the merge.
if you plan on huddling make sure you have your ETH and ERC20 tokens in a secure crypto wallet that you custody and if you’re planning on hodling because you want to receive any potential proof of work ETH forks consider creating an account with a safe exchange that will be supporting these forks.
if you plan on trading make sure you’ve transferred any ETH and or ERC20 tokens you plan on selling to a safe exchange before Ethereum related deposits and withdrawals are paused.
obviously the last thing you want is to be unable to transfer your crypto when you want to sell it.
the most pro tip consider sending your ETH and ERC20 tokens to multiple exchanges that you trust.
this is because exchange outages are extremely common when volatility is high in the crypto market.
and the second last thing you want is to be unable to sell because the exchange you’re using is down.
this ties into the last thing to consider about the merge and that’s that there will truly be no shortage of volatility besides all the macro factors I mentioned earlier there will be plenty of chaos within the crypto market due to investor expectations and buying and selling by ETH wales and Ethereum miners.
prepare yourself mentally for both a pump or a dump and don’t think that you can get away with doing everything on chain either.
there’s still a non-zero chance that something could go horribly wrong with the merge and many D5 protocols are proactively preparing for this by pausing transactions.
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