ETH is Best Top 10 Performer as First Stage of Merge Confirmed; It's 'Obviously a Very Tradable Event'

cryptonews.com:

The price of Ethereum’s native ETH token rallied on Thursday after the Ethereum Foundation on Wednesday announced that the Bellatrix upgrade – a key step that must be completed before the Merge – is scheduled for September 6.

As of Thursday at 09:30 UTC, ETH stood at 1,707. The token is up 4.2% for the past 24 hours, and it remains down by 7% for the past 7 days. 

Still, the daily gain was enough to position ETH as the day’s strongest performer among the top 10 coins by market capitalization.

ETH price past 30 days:

According to the announcement from the foundation that coordinates the development of the Ethereum network, the Bellatrix upgrade will happen in epoch 144896 on Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake-based Beacon Chain – 11:34:47am UTC on Sept 6. 

Additionally, the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) triggering The Merge is 58750000000000000000000, expected between September 10 and 20.

“Following years of hard work, Ethereum’s proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here! The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet,” the announcement said.

The announcement added that new client software for Ethereum node operators has now been released. It noted that node operators “must run both an execution and consensus layer client to remain on the network during and after The Merge.”

Further, the announcement also brought good news for those looking to cash in on bug bounties ahead of the Merge, saying:

All Merge-related bounties for vulnerabilities have received a 4x multiplier between now and the 8th of September. Critical bugs are now worth up to [USD] 1 million USD.

Steps towards Ethereum’s Merge:

Commenting on Twitter after the announcement, Ethereum lead developer Tim