From all-time highs to massive price dips, the crypto market can be tricky to navigate, which is why traders need cool merchandise that can get them all the treats this Halloween. Cointelegraph is here to assist and has dropped a Halloween collection to help hodlers express their belief in the industry’s bright future when it’s time to go trick-or-treating. Inspired by blockchain, proof-of-stake and the crypto community’s popular “to the moon” catchphrase, the Cointelegraph Store created a new collection to celebrate this year’s Halloween. The Crypto Monsters Halloween Collection features t-shirts, hoodies and mugs with various crypto-inspired designs. Crypto Monsters …

It’s been nearly two weeks since Ethereum made its historic transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, and some ex-ETH miners say they remain clueless on how to move forward. Following the Merge, many took to crypto Twitter to discuss what they believe will happen to these former Ethereum miners. On the day of the merge, Twitter user hashoveride tweeted: GPU #mining is dead less than 24 hours after the #merge. Here are the three largest #GPU chains and current daily profitability with a 3090 GPU and 6 us¢/kwh#ETC -7 ¢#XMR -37 ¢#RVN 2 ¢ The only coins showing profit have no …

Since the founding of Ethereum in 2015, an animating question that plagued the community was answered at exactly 06:42:59 UTC on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. Ethereum, the technological layer where a new class of applications and self-organizing organizations are being built, eliminated its reliance on an energy-intensive consensus mechanism called proof-of-work (PoW) to a more sustainable and secure consensus mechanism called proof-of-stake (PoS). In what has been described as one of the most significant milestones in blockchain history, the Merge has set the template for how Ethereum will continue to be the most powerful, most used, most credibly neutral, and …

As the Ethereum network’s move to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism drives adoption from institutional investors, the prices for graphics processing units (GPUs), often used for mining cryptocurrencies like Ether (ETH), have gone down in China. Following the historic Ethereum Merge on Sept. 15, the previously highly sought-out Nvidia GeForce GPUs have become significantly cheaper according to a report by the South China Morning Post. Peng, a Chinese merchant, gave the RTX 3080 as an example as the GPU’s price dropped from 8,000 yuan (1118 USD) to 5,000 yuan within 3 months. According to Peng, when Bitcoin (BTC) mining was …

While Ethereum (ETH) fans are enthusiastic about the successful Merge, Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten believes the upgrade will lead Ethereum into a “slow slide to irrelevance and eventual death.” According to Klippsten, the Ethereum community picked the wrong moment for detaching the protocol from its reliance on energy. As many parts of the world are experiencing severe energy shortages, he believed the environmental narrative is taking the back seat. In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Klippsten said “I think the world is just waking up to reality and Ethereum just went way off into Fantasyland at the exact wrong …

On the first day after the Merge, the decentralized finance (DeFi) community is settling into the seemingly uneventful transition of the Ethereum network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). However, it has yet to be seen the benefits that hard forks will bring to PoW supporters. So far, the most important contending networks in favor of the mining community, EthereumPoW and Ethereum Classic, have shown different outcomes post-Merge. A stumbling start The fledgling EthereumPoW started its debut with Twitter users reporting issues with accessing the network. The issues were confirmed to be the result of a hack to the network …

Fantom (FTM) is known for its speed and inexpensive layer-1 blockchain. Like other blockchains (for example, Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX)) that scale better than their counterpart, it has been dubbed an “Ethereum killer.” After raising $40 million in funds, Fantom launched its mainnet in December 2019. Since then, it has grown to become one of the most popular blockchains, sitting in the top 10 blockchains by total value locked (TVL) with $1.3 billion in TVL. Fantom’s high-throughput blockchain is an open-source smart contract platform. It is scalable and EVM-compatible, meaning you can deploy and run your Ethereum decentralized applications …

Ethereum's Merge on Sep. 15 turned out to be a sell-the-news event, which looks set to continue. Notably, Ether (ETH) dropped considerably against the U.S. dollar and Bitcoin (BTC) after the Merge. As of Sep. 22, ETH/USD and ETH/BTC trading pairs were down by more than 20% and 17%, respectively, since Ethereum's switch to Proof-of-Stake (PoS. What's eating Ether bulls? Multiple catalysts contributed to Ether's declines in the said period. First, ETH's price fall against the dollar appeared in sync with similar declines elsewhere in the crypto market, driven by Federal Reserve's 75 basis points (bps) rate hike. Second, Ethereum …

The Ethereum blockchain’s carbon footprint is expected to reduce by 99% following last week’s Merge event. By positioning staking as a service for retail and institutional investors, the upgrade could also have a significant impact on the crypto economy, according to a report from Bitwise on Tuesday. The company said it projects potential gains of 4-8% for long-term investors through ETH staking, while J.P. Morgan analysts forecast that staking yields across PoS blockchains could double to $40 billion by 2025. Users who stake crypto assets earn rewards — known as yields — from transaction fees paid by other network users. …

Ethereum's switch to proof-of-stake (PoS) on Sep. 15 failed to extend Ether's (ETH) upside momentum as ETH miners added sell-pressure to the market. On the daily chart, ETH price declined from around $1,650 on Sep. 15 to around $1,350 on Sep. 20, an almost 16% drop. The ETH/USD pair dropped in sync with other top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), amid worries about higher Federal Reserve rate hikes. Ethereum remains inflationary The Ether price drop on Sep. 15 also coincided with an increase in ETH supply, albeit not immediately post-Merge. $ETH is now Ultra Sound Money pic.twitter.com/fKz6VmoWdR — DavidHoffman.eth (@TrustlessState) September …

By the end of last week, the federal agencies presented the results of their six-month-long work on the principal directions for digital assets regulation in the United States. The resulting first-ever crypto framework, published on the White House website, may not contain many surprises or exact details, but, as a part of President Joe Biden’s executive order, it will undoubtedly affect the policymaking decisions to come. Perhaps the most important section of the framework is dedicated to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). It revealed that the administration has already developed policy objectives for a U.S. CBDC system, but further research …

Following the completion of The Merge upgrade, Ethereum (ETH) transitioned into a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, helping the blockchain become energy efficient and secure. However, mining data reveals Ethereum’s heavy reliance on Flashbots — a single server — for building blocks, raising concerns over a single point of failure for the ecosystem. Flashbots is a centralized entity dedicated to transparent and efficient Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) extraction, which acts as a relay for delivering Ethereum blocks. Data from mevboost.org show that there are six active relays currently delivering at least one block in Ethereum, namely Flashbots, BloXroute Max Profit, BloXroute …