James Butterfill, the head of research at CoinShares, claimed that despite “the greater confidence of the Merge,” outflows continue.
Institutional investors may be hesitant ahead of the Ethereum Merge, with a $61.6 million outflow in ETH-based digital asset investment products indicating doubts about the effectiveness of the upgrade.
According to fund management CoinShares’ weekly report on flows in digital asset funds, the majority of outflows for the week of September 5–11 came from ether-based investment products, marking the market’s fifth straight week of outflows.
In reference to the anticipated Sept. 15 Ethereum Merge, author James Butterfill stated that the outflows have occurred “despite the greater certainty of the Merge,” which may indicate investor apprehension that the “event might not happen as planned.”
Despite the Bellatrix upgrade getting through reasonably undamaged on September 6, the possibility of a successful Merge has increased over the past week.
According to Ethereum node data aggregator Ethernodes, 84.6% of Ethereum nodes are currently also “Merge ready,” up 15.1% from the 73.5% rate from the previous week.
Butterfill said that CoinShares had previously maintained that since the technical requirements of the hard fork had undergone extensive testing, there were unlikely to be any problems brought on by the Ethereum upgrade.
There is presently no agreement on whether or not the Ethereum Merge has already been taken into account in the price of ETH, which is currently $1,688, or whether the Merge will be a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event.
According to Mudit Gupta, chief security officer at Polygon, the Ethereum Merge has been factored into the price of ETH because it is “public information.”
If it’s public knowledge, it’s already priced in.
If it’s not public knowledge, it’s insider trading.
Don’t get rekt trying to gamble 🫡
— Mudit Gupta (@Mudit__Gupta) September 7, 2022
On the other hand, a crypto researcher going by the handle “punk4936” on Twitter thinks that the current ETH price doesn’t represent a 99% reduction in ETH issuance and a 99.9% boost in energy efficiency following the Merge.
Proof-of-stake (PoS) will replace proof-of-work (PoW) as the network’s consensus method after the Ethereum Merge, which is expected to happen on September 15 at around 3:20 am UTC, according to Blocknative.
Ethereum is about to get a 99% cut in issuance and a 99.9% cut in energy usage, the merge is not priced in
— 4936 (@punk4936) September 7, 2022
