At this moment, all eyes are on Ethereum merge and the final stages of the countdown. This, a revolutionary step for the blockchain is a significant step for a $1 trillion market hoping to expand. And of course, there will be no expansion possible with the current rates of energy consumption to mine cryptocurrencies. While the White House is bringing down a hail storm of regulations on digital assets, Ethereum is hours away from sailing into the new land which is Proof of Stake. Can it be the moment when all the GPU scalpers who robbed us of our 120 fps gaming during the pandemic learn a lesson? Will it eventually bring down the big 4 mining companies who cause power grid failures in third world countries and get richer?
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap is now crossing a bridge away from the Bitcoin maximalists. All hands on deck, even Google has added a new year style countdown for Ethereum merge. But, there’s also a catch and it is there to bring suspense to this article so that you would keep on reading. So, keep on skimming and scanning this piece to find out what the institutional investors are doing hours before this so called revolution.
Search “Ethereum Merge” on Google
Yeah, there is a countdown for Ethereum merge on Google and it’s more exciting that the bomb countdown in CS:GO. Just kidding, nothing is more exciting than the bomb countdown in CS:GO when you’re camping behind the crates to snipe the bejesus out of a toxic kid. Nonetheless, everything is news and every news is supposed to be super-exciting these days. Here’s the latest image of the countdown I personally took on Google to make the article more visually engaging.
Naturally, speculations are growing over what would happen when the transition is complete. With that, some believe there will be a rally for ETH and others expect a dip. In the meantime, it would be quite possible that nothing significant would happen. Much like Tolkien stories, we have a battle of optimism Vs. Pessimism going on in Crypto Twitter as they are bleeding in their mention wars. A magnificent battle of bots, retail investors and social media marketing specialists is now on full swing in Twitter, or should I say on Twitter?
Regardless, we will have some answers when the countdown ends. Until then however, institutional investors are selling ETH and jumping on their life boats. That’s right, big players are now backing down from Ethereum merge.
Institutional investors
Maybe, the Ethereum merge is not exciting but anxiety-inducing. After all, planting the bomb in CS: GO is exciting but when the other team does it, it will cause you anxiety. Picture yourself, rushing to defuse the bomb while you know there’s 14-year-old toxic kid is waiting to land a perfect 360 headshot on you.
Consequently, a quick look at Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly report by CoinShares is saying a lot about the merge. According to the report, institutional investors are pulling out, from the countdown perhaps.
“Digital asset investment products saw outflows totaling $63 million, the fifth consecutive week of outflows…
Ethereum was the primary focus of the outflows, totaling $62 million last week, this comes despite the improved certainty of the merge and perhaps highlights a concern amongst investors that the event might not go as planned.”
In the meantime, BTC has also had a bad five weeks losing only $13 million in the last week. While this is Childs play compared to some of the biggest outflows $BTC and $ETH have seen, it’s not exactly okay either.
Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Ripple (XRP) saw minor inflows this week. Solana has had the largest inflows this year with $114 million according to CoinShares. Perhaps, the extremely exciting Solana phone is why no one is anxious over SOL network outages.
