Post-Merge Fallout: A Closer Look Into Price and Issuance

The Merge underscores perhaps the most impactful milestone from the original ETH roadmap, as it ushers in fundamental changes to Ethereum’s consensus, issuance, and it’s energy efficiency. It has also brought with it a high level of speculative interest in the ETH markets and has triggered heated debates on where its price may be headed. Before we dig into the aftermath of ETHs price following the Merge, here’s a quick review of what transpired heading into the Merge.

Since the market-wide bottom in June, ETH has been on a tear. And despite strong evidence suggesting crypto markets are still highly correlated with their legacy counterparts and macroeconomic factors, ETH was able to buck the trend and significantly outperform BTC and other major asset classes. At its peak, ETH managed to stage a 130% recovery from its lows, with ETH/BTC also fully retracing its capitulary tumble from the crypto contagion in May/June. Compared to BTC, whose revival was much more muted, posting only a 42% recovery (from its bottom to its peak). However, this all changed following the completion of The Merge, in classic “sell-the-news” fashion.

Since September 14th, ETH has practically given back all gains achieved since the middle of July. ETH is down over 20% since The Merge, whereas BTC and the wider crypto market are only down around 4-7%. Within the past week, only a few digital assets ($XRP, $ALGO, $APE, $HNT, and $FOLD) with varying catalysts have been able to outperform.

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