Cryptogram-16SEP2022

Success!!! (yawn)

September 16, 2022

16 September 2022

In this issue

Hello, It was one of the dullest moments of success in crypto history. One with phenomenal consequences, but dull nonetheless. No drama, no major volatility. Just a well-planned, well-executed success. But dull. Even the guys in-charge of making the Merge happen smoothly barely showed the kind of excitement a moment like this demands, have a look at this video where Vitalik and others mark the last block on the Ethereum mainnet getting merged. Even his tweet seemed tired.

But of course they were all tired. They pulled off something which no one could say with certainty would be a success in a pretty clean manner. So, congrats, Team Ethereum! Welcome to all of us to the after-Merge.So, how does the crypto world look after the Merge, what should you know as an investor? This issue of Cryptogram is all about it. (And we are SO glad the Merge is finally over, we really want to move on to other things now.)

The newsletter is put together by Giottus Crypto Platform and The News Minute’s Brand Studio. You can read all the previous issues of Cryptogram here.

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THE BIG STORY

How the after-Merge looks

Let’s get you a quick snapshot of how the Ethereum ecosystem and market look a day after the Merge.  No volatility in ETH priceThe big mystery of how ETH price will react to the Merge is over – it’s pretty flat, and on expected lines. There was a small drop in its price before the transition was completed, and then it bounced back immediately after. In the last few hours, there has been about a 10% drop in the price, but that was expected since it was widely believed and accepted that the pre-Merge price of ETH had already factored in the value of a successful Merge. Ethereum blockchain stableEthereum blockchain looks stable. Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann said that blocks have shown “amazing stability” after the merge as only one was missed. Buterin also corroborated this view, saying the percentage of full blocks has dropped to 10%.

Deflationary signs point to brighter future for ETH (PoS)With 13,665,708 ETH currently staked, 1,681.2 ETH will be issued to stakers daily, resulting in annual inflation of roughly 0.5%. A representative of Ultra Sound Money noted that Ethereum’s supply dropped by 194 ETH and keeps dropping, meaning the network has already produced deflationary blocks under Proof of Stake. With Ether’s supply stable, or even decreasing, that could potentially make every existing coin more valuable, some believe. While in traditional finance, deflation is a bad thing, it is a positive element for cryptocurrencies. A deflationary crypto decrease in its market supply as time goes by, which makes it more valuable for the investors. This is achieved through burning the tokens.PoS hashrate drops to 0, but spikes seen elsewhereEthereum (PoS) Mining Pool’s hashrate became zero after the transition to PoS, but data from 2miners showed that the mining hashrate of proof-of-work tokens like Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin (RVN), and others have surged in the last 24 hours to new highs. All the miners being put out of work by Ethereum’s PoS transition are now moving to other PoW networks. ETHPoW is strugglingETHPoW is the rival network of a group which wants to preserve the PoW mechanism, so they created the offshoot. A Twitter thread posted on Monday by @EthereumPoW said the PoW fork would happen 24 hours after the Merge, meaning the forked chain will likely go live on Friday. But embarrassing technical issues are already plaguing it. And while it rallied massively before the Merge, after the Merge it has drastically dropped.

What all this means to you, and what you should do

  • Be very careful about buying ETH now. The Merge excitement is over, there is nothing to look forward to now but the Ethereum ecosystem settling down into a stable, dependable network. So, ETH may have not just bottomed-out yet.

  • When you think that ETH has bottomed-out, that would be a good time to buy more ETH. Because..

  • ETH has become a lot more solid in the long-term. So, have more faith in the future of the coin and the ecosystem.

  • Keep an eye on the new development which is happening on the Ethereum ecosystem – there is a lot of excitement, like ENS, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon. Investing in these projects is high-risk, but could also be high-reward.

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  THE TOP FIVE 

Stories from this week you cannot miss

  EXPLAIN, PLEASE 

Demystifying the world of cryptocurrency

This week, we explain GameFiGameFi is the combination of gaming and finance. It refers to games which are on a blockchain and offer economic incentives to players. In most GameFi games, players can earn crypto or NFTs by completing tasks, winning over other players, or crossing levels. The exciting part here is that blockchain games allow players to transfer their wins out of the virtual world. This allows players to trade their items on NFT marketplaces and their crypto earnings on crypto exchanges – this has not been possible with traditional gaming. If you are a gaming enthusiast, you need to check out some of the blockchain games! That’s it for this week, see you next Friday. 

If you have any questions or feedback for us, write to us at [email protected]. You can check out the previous issues here.

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