The No.2 cryptocurrency was supposed to be weeks away from the “merge”, a transformative June upgrade of its blockchain Ethereum to make it faster, cheaper and less power hungry, holding out the prospect of a meaner and cleaner crypto future.
The anticipation had supported ether this year, even as inflation and monetary tightening shackled bitcoin.
Ether fell 8% from $3,215 to $2,947 on April 11, the day Ethereum lead developer Tim Beiko said on Twitter that the June rollout had been pushed back as tests continued.
The timing of the merge – Ethereum’s EH1 chain will meld with a new chain to create ETH2 – remains unclear, although many crypto watchers expect it to happen some time this year.
Yet bitcoin remains just an investment without any real ability to be used for contracts in decentralized finance applications.
“We are seeing funds rotate into Ethereum in preparation for the merge, even though we don’t know when it’s going to be,” said Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at Genesis Trading.
Ethereum has long been hobbled by issues of speed and processing costs.