Ethereum has recorded a significant drop in its price after dropping to its lowest point since March 2021. According to available data from Coingecko, the second-largest digital asset by market cap has lost over 8% of its value within the last 24 hours.
This price crash is, however, not an isolated event as it is part of a massive drop across the crypto industry over the last 24 hours.
For context, Bitcoin, the flagship digital asset, has dropped by nearly 2% within the last 24 hours to less than $29k.
However, Ethereum’s loss places it among the top losers within the time frame amongst the top 10 digital assets by market cap.
Why is Ethereum Price Falling?
Ethereum’s rapid price drop within the last 24 hours is surprising because the network recently celebrated its Ropsten merge, which many analysts predicted would be a precursor to the Merge.
However, it appears the Merge has hit a snag as Tim Beiko, a core developer at Ethereum Foundation, recently hinted that the Merge could be happening between August and November.
If we found 0 more bugs, we can probably merge in a couple months. I just don’t think that’s realistic. Also don’t think it’s likely we will find 10, or even 5?, more severe issues. Confidence shrinks exponentially within that range, though.
This is in line with an earlier statement made by Vitalik Buterin who wrote that the merge could happen between August and October while also pointing out that there are risks of delays.
According to Ben Edgington, the lead product manager for Teku, the Ethereum difficulty bomb is also one of the reasons for the delay in the Merge.
Per his statement,
So we will push back the Ethereum difficulty bomb. We say it won’t delay the Merge. I sincerely hope not. Every extra week on PoW generates close to 1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Ethereum’s difficulty bomb is a mechanism designed to increase the mining difficulty of the asset. It is also a mechanism by the developers to encourage miners to abandon the proof-of-work mechanism for the proof-of-stake network.