Ether Price Trades Flat After Successful Ethereum Merge

The price of ether (ETH) moved less than 1% to $1,605 during the first few minutes after the Ethereum Merge, remaining effectively flat during the Asia trading day.

• In the two-week run-up to the Merge, the price of the blockchain's native token was up 4%, but remains down 15.5% on the month, according to market data.
• Meanwhile, the price of token ethereum classic (ETC) is down 2% to $36.34.
• While Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was quoted on the Bankless podcast as saying ether was “not going to be priced in pretty much until after [the Merge] happens,” traders appeared to disagree.
• “Many believe that the Merge might make Ethereum faster or cheaper. This is not the case. For end users or developers there should be no noticeable difference between Ethereum before and after the Merge,” Will Harborne, founder and CEO of the rhino.fi protocol, told CoinDesk.
• According to EtherNodes, 88% of ether nodes were Merge-ready and synched in the moments leading up to the event. In total 12%, or 305, nodes appeared to be recalcitrant with the transition with the majority from the Geth network.
• While the Merge didn’t have a material impact on the price of ether, on-chain data shows an inflow of $1.2 billion onto exchanges, as CoinDesk previously reported.
• Steep exchange inflow is usually a sign of traders preparing to sell, however, there isn’t a consensus yet. It could be anything from investors hedging positions to preparing to collect airdropped tokens from the expected EthereumPoW fork.
• “If this happened last year we’d be at $8,000 already,” March Zheng, a Shanghai-based partner at Bizantine Capital said to CoinDesk via WeChat. “But the fundamentals couldn’t be stronger.”

Read more: The Ethereum Merge Is Done, Opening a New Era for the Second-Biggest Blockchain