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Ether hits its highest price in 2 months following the successful Merge on its Goerli testnet
(Kitco News) - Ethereum (ETH) continues to lead the cryptocurrency market higher as the top altcoin saw its price hit a 2-month high of $1,945 in trading on Thursday following the successful integration of the Merge on its Goerli testnet.
Data from TradingView shows that the price action for Ether began to pick up in the early hours on Thursday after the Goerli Merge was announced, spiking 14% from $1,700 to an intraday high of $1,945 before pulling back to its new support level at $1,900.
ETH/USD 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Goerli was the last remaining test scheduled to undergo the Merge following the successful integration on the Ropsten and Sepolia testnets earlier in the year.
The Goerli testnet has been successfully merged and is now a full Proof of Stake chain.
— sassal.eth ?????? (@sassal0x) August 11, 2022
Next up is (finally) the Ethereum mainnet!!
The Merge is coming ??
This means that today's successful integration clears the way for mainnet Merge to take place around Sept. 15 as scheduled, the final step in Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake (PoS).
The PoS Merge is being widely touted as one of the most significant updates in the history of Ethereum as it will help significantly reduce the network's energy consumption. It will also move the protocol one step closer to its goal of greater scalability, security, and sustainability as it will enable future upgrades to be integrated.
According to the Ethereum website, after the Merge is complete, the project will focus on a multi-phased sharding upgrade that will significantly enhance the "distribution of data storage requirements, enabling rollups to be even cheaper, and making nodes easier to operate."
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Recently, Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz suggested that Ethereum could continue to see more upside despite surging more than 90% from its 2022 low, especially if it manages to break through the key resistance level at $2,200.
"Ethereum's got a little bit more juice to the top of its range. If it takes out $2,200 it could go higher. That's got a real story. But I don't see you know the mania that we saw in 2021 or 2017 reigniting," Novogratz stated.
Data related to capital inflows into Ethereum-based institutional funds support this outlook, with more and $16.3 million being invested into these products during the week ending Aug. 5. Bitcoin funds experienced $8.5 million worth of outflows during this same time period, suggesting that institutional investors are more bullish on Ethereum than Bitcoin in the near-term.
Caution is warranted, however, as developments like this have a history of being "buy the rumor, sell the news" types of events in the crypto ecosystem. There is a good chance that the ETH price could experience a significant selloff once the Merge is successfully completed.
