Researcher Predict Bitcoin’s Price May Crash after “The Merge”

Kyle McDonald, an artist and, an independent researcher has predicted that Bitcoin‘s price will fall after Ethereum‘s planned “The Merge”.

Kyle made this prediction during a CoinDesk TV program on Friday.

According to the researcher, after Ethereum’s transition from its current energy-intensive method known as proof-of-work to a less energy-intensive method ‘proof-of-stake‘, Bitcoin’s network may be “regulated away” resulting in the crash of the price of the digital asset.

He said investors and regulators alike will come to realize that the proof-of-work mechanism was really never necessary.

Citing environmental concerns and Bitcoin’s inability to leave the proof-of-work method, “it could be the first to be regulated away”, he said. Therefore, he advised that now is the best time to sell Bitcoin as the digital currency will never see $69,000 again.

NFTs risk after the merge

After the merger, according to Kyle McDonald, some miners might temporarily adopt “proof-of-work”. Should that happen, there will be duplication of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on another blockchain. This, he said, can drastically reduce the value of the NFTs.

However, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, Opensea has openly declared its support for the merger.

The platform will not allow any speculative Ethereum fork such as the ETHPoW fork that happens after the merge is activated. It will also not support any ETHPoW fork NFT in circulation after the merger.

Also stablecoin issuers, Tether and Circle are solely supporting the merge. The two stablecoin issuers unite to taper down concerns over a potential contentious hard fork in September.

Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake is scheduled for September 19. Although a timeline for the launch has been set, the protocol will still cause significant damage to the environment before this happens.

Notably, The merge hopes to lower Ethereum’s energy consumption by over 99% and get it ready for sharding, a scaling option that will come later on the protocol’s roadmap. 

Also, ETH owners can earn profits by staking their currencies to protect the network. 

Ethereum’s “the merge” will significantly lower crypto energy consumption which has been a major concern for government and environmental activists.