End-of-Week Ethereum: Merge News Fails to Hold Price Up, Traders Discuss Merge-Related Sell-Off, Binance Joins Exchanges Preparing for Possible Fork
The price of Ethereum’s native token ETH fell over the past 24 hours, while developers identified several bugs and traders started fearing the Merge could become a ‘sell the news’-type of event.
On Friday at 09:10 UTC, ETH was down by 2.8% for the past 24 hours to a price of USD 1,661. The drop was sharper than for bitcoin (BTC), and enough to make ETH today’s second-worst performer among the top 10 cryptoassets by market capitalization after solana (SOL).
This stands in sharp contrast to it being the best performer in that category just the day before.
The price drop followed reports from Thursday that Ethereum developers have identified bugs in the software ahead of the Merge, or Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).
Details about one such bug were shared by Ethereum developer Péter Szilágyi. Writing on Twitter, Szilágyi said that the bug, found in Geth 1.10.22, “causes the trie/state to go bad,” adding that he is “trying to find and fix the issue.”
Daniel Celeda, an Ethereum core developer and consultant for Ethereum development firm Nethermind, said he had encountered a similar problem:
While developers discussed the technical risks heading into the Merge, traders were – as always – focused on price. Among them was the popular economist and crypto trader Alex Krüger, who warned of risks to market players as the Merge nears.
Writing on Twitter, Krüger reminded his followers that bitcoin fell 20% two days before its last halving, and 10% just hours before the halving, calling it “a classic case of positioning driven ‘sell the news’.”
It would “make sense for ETH to do the same,” Krüger wrote.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange Binance – the largest exchange by trading volume – announced on Thursday
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