Excitement around the merge has already faded, but the long-term benefits Ethereum will reap from the technical upgrade have yet to be realized, according to JPMorgan. After leading the crypto market in the late summer ahead of the event, and enjoying a pre-merge rally, ether ended up being a sell-the-news event. It finished September down about 15% and underperformed other cryptocurrencies. The merge refers to a technical transition meant to improve its security in a way that lowered energy consumption by almost 100%. It was a base layer meant to give way to a series of planned upgrades that will ultimately tackle Ethereum’s biggest issues, like its processing capacity and high transaction fees, also known as gas fees. “The cryptocurrency market remains in need of a catalyst and while the merge is the first step in a series of upgrades to Ethereum, the market has yet to price in the upside that might come from increased capacity and throughput that we see as the Ethereum roadmap is executed,” Kenneth Worthington, an analyst at JPMorgan, said in a recent note. One of the most attractive potential outcomes of the merge for investors, a smaller supply of ether, hasn’t quite arrived yet, but JPMorgan says it’s still early. While the ether supply has continued to increase since the merge, it has slowed to a di minimis pace, Worthington said. It could begin to fall if transaction activity were to pick up and block fees, which are down substantially since July, were to rebound, he added. Another selling point for investors, higher staking yields, has changed more slowly than many had hoped. It has increased as expected, however, to about 5.05% from 4.2% before the merge. Maximal extractable value could add more than 100 basis points to the yield, Worthington said. In the near term, crypto assets including ether are in a holding pattern as they wait for both a new catalyst to draw investors into the market and, more importantly, for the Federal Reserve to pivot away from its path of aggressive interest rate hikes. That means that the biggest use case for any cryptocurrency is still speculation, but Ethereum will be a key player in changing that down the road, according to JPMorgan. “We believe that the Ethereum Merge could be a big factor in terms of increasing the use cases for blockchain into new areas, including financial services,” Worthington said, highlighting decentralized finance and NFTs.
Crypto investors still haven't priced in the upside from the Ethereum merge, JPMorgan says
| Name | Price |
|---|---|
 Bitcoin(BTC) | $63,494.00 |
 Ethereum(ETH) | $3,046.40 |
 Tether(USDT) | $1.00 |
 BNB(BNB) | $553.76 |
 Solana(SOL) | $141.44 |
 USDC(USDC) | $1.00 |
 Lido Staked Ether(STETH) | $3,044.89 |
 XRP(XRP) | $0.50 |
 Dogecoin(DOGE) | $0.153017 |
 Cardano(ADA) | $0.466413 |
 TRON(TRX) | $0.109807 |
 Polkadot(DOT) | $6.65 |
 Polygon(MATIC) | $0.67 |
 Litecoin(LTC) | $80.63 |
More for You
Tags
Adoption (571)
altcoins (4142)
Analysis (397)
Binance (676)
bitcoin (12086)
bitcoin news (615)
Bitcoin Price (867)
blockchain (5517)
BTC (8186)
BTC price (713)
BTCUSD (1250)
BTCUSDT (722)
Cardano (629)
Coinbase (592)
Crypto (2781)
Cryptocurrencies (1222)
Cryptocurrency (673)
Cryptocurrency Market News (457)
crypto news (820)
DeFi (4160)
Dogecoin (663)
ETH (1596)
ethereum (5793)
ETHUSD (498)
Finance (491)
FTX (520)
Markets (1413)
News (7527)
NFTs (414)
Opinion (397)
Policy (424)
Polygon (429)
Regulation (619)
Regulators (767)
Ripple (680)
Scams (410)
SEC (861)
Shiba Inu (400)
SOL (572)
Solana (1001)
Sponsored (488)
Technology (779)
Trading (2554)
United States (424)
XRP (615)
Related News
Posted by admin | April 19, 2024
Journalist Ethereum could fall under the $3k psychological support zone soon Metrics flashed a strong buy signal, but there’s more that investors need to consider Lately, Ethereum [ETH] has seen...
Posted by admin | April 18, 2024
BlockDAG is capturing the spotlight in cryptocurrency with its latest teaser for a moon-based keynote and an astonishing 30,000x ROI potential. As Ethereum continues to navigate market trends and Kaspa...
Posted by admin | April 18, 2024
Last updated: April 19, 2024 01:16 EDT | 2 min read The Ethereum network reported a robust income of $365 million in the first quarter of 2024, an impressive year-on-year...