Ahead of ‘Merge’ Ether trading volumes spike

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Indian cryptocurrency exchanges are witnessing a bump up in trading volumes of Ether, the second-most valuable crypto in the world, ahead of Ethereum’s transition into a less energy-intensive technology to run its blockchain. The “The Merge”, or how the transition is known, is expected to take place sometime on September 15 and is being touted as one of the most important events for the crypto industry. The switch is expected to reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by almost 99.95%. Ethereum refers to the blockchain-based software platform, while its cryptocurrency asset is called Ether.

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The price of Ether, which had mostly trended higher over the last seven days (up 2.4% since September 7), fell by about 7% in the last 24 hours, according to data platform Coingecko.com, following the release of US inflation data on Tuesday. Ether was trading at about $1,600 as of writing this article. The Merge was sent in motion on September 6 with the implementation of the Bellatrix Upgrade. According to the Ethereum Foundation's blog, the upgrade activates in two phases: the first, named Bellatrix, and the second, named Paris. Indian crypto trading platforms are seeing a surge in trading of Ether ahead of the Merge, senior industry executives told ET. Trading activity on Ether “has been seeing increased traction with volumes up 70-80% (last seven-day volume, as compared to our average weekly volume on that pair) than our usual volume on Eth pairs,” said Minal Thukral, executive vice president, growth and strategy at CoinDCX, a crypto exchange.