Ethereum has broken below $1,700 since July 2021. At that time, ETH’s price was reacting to the downside due to an increase in selling pressure across the crypto market. Related Reading | TA: Ethereum Holds Key Support, Why ETH Must Clear This Hurdle This time, Ethereum seems to be reacting to poor macro-economic conditions, and a potential delay in its most important milestone in recent history: The Merge. The event that will complete ETH’s transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain. At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) trades at $1,680 with a 6% and 8% loss in the last 24-hours and 7-days, respectively. ETH is one of the worst performers in the top 10 by market cap followed by Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE), and XRP. The Ethereum network recently saw the successful deployment of “The Merge” on its oldest testnet, Ropsten. This was celebrated by the community with many claiming a mainnet launch could be possible by August or September this year. “The Merge” implementation on Ropsten saw some difficulties, but ETH core developer Tim Beiko claimed they were addressed and “all fixed”. The Difficulty Bomb is part of the mechanism that will enable Ethereum to migrate to a PoS consensus. This mechanism will progressively increase mining difficulty and prevent these actors to support a second ETH based on Proof-of-Work (PoW). As Beiko explained, the Difficulty Bomb is already having an impact on the network: The bomb is b...
