Does the Ethereum Merge offer a new destination for institutional investors?
Last week’s Merge was the “most significant development in the history of the Ethereum network,” according to Fidelity Digital.
And from a purely technical standpoint, the blockchain network’s transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism was a marvel. Widely compared to changing a jet engine mid-flight, the software upgrade proceeded with nary a glitch on Sept. 15.
Overnight, too, Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain platform, reduced its energy usage by 99.95% from a rate as high as 94 TWh per year in May — roughly equivalent to the nation-state Chile — to an almost negligible 0.01 TWh on Sept. 16, according to Digiconomist.
This should carry some weight with regulators threatening to clamp down on blockchain networks for environmental profligacy. It could also bring more institutional investors into the crypto space.
To this last point: Institutional investors like pension funds, insurance companies, foundations and others matter because they tend to be longer-term investors and are not inclined to trade on rumors or overreact to 24-hour news cycles. Broad participation from this group could help solve crypto’s persistent liquidity and volatility problems.
Yet, others believe that while the Merge offers corporations and large financial institutions a more eco-friendly platform, as well as new staking opportunities, it doesn’t yet solve one of Ethereum’s core deficits: its lack of scalability. Not yet, anyway.
“The Merge is a watershed moment for the crypto industry, but the impact to accelerate adoption by institutional investors will take more time,” Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, told Cointelegraph.
“Ethereum
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