Is the Merge Tonight? Is the Merge Tomorrow?
Within 24 hours the Ethereum Mainnet will merge with the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake system.
This will mark the end of proof-of-work for Ethereum.
Here are 4 things that are about to happen, starting tomorrow.
1st, Your GPU rigs will no longer be able to mine Ethereum. You may have plans to simply switch to the next most profitable coin. Unfortunately, at least initially, there will not be a next profitable coin; there will only be a coin that costs you the least to mine, the price of electricity will outpace your day to day earnings from whats leftover.
There is SO MUCH Hashpower working on Ethereum Main net right now its like we are all miners on a cruise ship headed for the Fyre Festival - there are 6000 of us on this boat, and they’ve only got 150 tents set up.
Unfortunately, wildly increasing hash power on a coin will not raise that coins price. It works the other way around. Once a coins value starts to go up radically, that will cause more hash power to be applied to it.
So, starting tomorrow, September 15th 2022 - EVERYONE will be unprofitable, including this mess in front of me. That will lead to a huge number of GPU miners turning things off because it is more profitable to simply buy whatever speculative play you want to make than to set your miner on it, losing money. And yes - there are .01% of you out there with completely free electricity, you get to keep going, youre just going to need to go get a job, also Im so sorry.
BUT, once enough people turn off their machines, profitability will go up! Which will lead to more miners turning their machines back on, which will lead to profitability going back down.
This see saw of hash power vs profitability will commence for an unknown amount of time - and thats what you have to look forward to now.
Sure, youre welcome to set your algorithm to Raven or Ergo or ETC or maybe some group will actually be successful at forking the POW Ethererum and call it ETHPOW - but tomorrow night when you go to bed, you will unfortunately run the numbers and be in the red.
I imagine this will cause a great deal of distress to a large number of people who may have recently put quite a lot of money into GPUs.. I feel you. I dont have a solution, and Im not trying to make you feel worse.
Happy Merge Day. Have a good night.
