More Merge excitement

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb claims he has found Planet B. The cryptopreneur has launched “Vast”, which aims to send humans to space so they can live anywhere across the solar system. No chat about terraforming or even sending a rocket to space. Elon Musk has competition.

The markets were back to red. Bitcoin slipped below $21,500 while Ethereum dropped to $1,610 levels. Nasdaq fell on a technology selloff. Back home, Sensex and Nifty held on to their gains.

Merge Means Money

Large investors are now buying into the Merge hype. It seems Ethereum could become the most sought-after crypto for institutional investors after the transition is complete.

Source: Watcher.Guru, as of 7:15 PM IST

The big boys are hereWhy are these institutional investors finding love in Ethereum? High returns. Once the merge takes place, transactions will be cheaper and faster. This means higher margins, which means high revenues and bigger profits. Ethereum will also now encourage staking and that will make the network more valuable.

Use case upWhen transactions are cheaper and faster, the next layer of companies will want to build on Ethereum as well. The expectation is that a fair number of decentralised apps could be built on Ethereum, which could displace banks and insurers.

Move to the SurgeThe Merge is not the end to Ethereum’s scaling. Next comes the Surge, which will break the blockchain into small segments that are easier to validate. This prevents data overload and transactions can be approved far quicker. It’s another pull factor for large investors.

Last minute prepWhile the PoS switch is on track, some Ethereum miners haven’t given up. The Ethereum Proof-of-Work hard fork is expected to happen 24 hours after the Merge is completed.

Can ADA Break Up With The Bear?

Cardano (ADA) seems to be set for a rally after the last few months of lows. One reason for this is its upcoming, much anticipated, Vasil hard fork. We know we talk about the Merge a lot more, but this upgrade is probably just as significant. Expected to go live next week, it will reduce transaction costs and improve network capacity for ADA.

Devs are prepping The Vasil upgrade will make Cardano more developer friendly. It is also aiming to replace Ethereum as the preferred blockchain for the development of dApps and smart contracts. All major exchanges have prepared for the Vasil upgrade.

The lines are alignedBesides the upgrade, the data seems to suggest ADA is sitting on the fence. It can go either way, depending on how it trades in the next few days. Depending on what happens this week, we’ll know where it is headed in the coming weeks.

No Privacy In Crypto

Seychelles-based crypto exchange Huobi Global said Monday it will delist seven privacy tokens. It wants to be compliant with “policies of every country and region”.

Why this mattersWe’ve spoken about this before. The most significant event in the crypto privacy space this year has been the US Treasury’s sanctions on privacy mixer Tornado Cash. Six crypto engineers and investors sued the Treasury over the sanctions. Coinbase is backing them.

Who is winning?Governments are trying to understand how to deal with cryptocurrencies. People are entitled to protect their identities, so they use tokens and services that offer privacy. Governments don’t like to see transactions that can’t be traced. The result? Bans. Exchanges comply because they want to remain in business.

So far, governments-1, privacy-0.

Hodlnaut Is Freaking Out

The Merge has freaked out Hodlnaut. The crypto lender is worried about bankruptcy once Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake.

How is it connected?When the Merge happens, there could be a hard fork by miners.

1. The split would form two tokens, Ethereum and Ethereum Proof of Work. Each token will have a different price.

2. The network could make errors in price by choosing the wrong token instead.

Errors could cause Hodlnaut’s assets to be auto-liquidated by smart contracts. The company can avoid these risks only by selling off its ETH tokens on DeFi platforms.

FYI Hodlnaut froze withdrawals in August because of the crypto market crash. A Singapore court has appointed experts to resolve the crisis.

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