Institutional investors might be wary before the Ethereum Merge since a $61.6 million outflow from ETH-based digital asset investment instruments suggests they have concerns about the upgrade’s efficacy.
The majority of outflows during the week of September 5–11 came from ether-based investment products, according to fund management CoinShares’ weekly report on flows in digital asset funds; this was the market’s fifth consecutive week of outflows.
The report’s author, James Butterfill, said the withdrawals happened “despite the greater certainty of the Merge,” which may have caused investors to worry that the upcoming Ethereum Merge on September 15 “may not happen as planned.”
Even though the Bellatrix update passed on September 6 with little to no damage, the likelihood of a successful Merge has grown recently.
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 stated that CoinShares had previously asserted that there were unlikely to be any issues caused by the Ethereum upgrade because the technical needs of the hard fork had undergone rigorous testing.
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 if the Merge will be an instance of “buy the rumor, sell the news.”
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.”
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.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/10/25/merge-jitters-sees-outflow-from-ether-based-investment-products/