Ethereum Tops $2,000 as Network Approaches Merge Event

Ethereum (ETH) continued its bull run and reclaimed the $2,000 level late on Friday night for the first time since May, according to data from CoinMarketCap. 

The No. 2 cryptocurrency by market cap was up to $2,014 at the time of writing, up 7% in the past 24 hours and 17% in the past week. It has nearly doubled in the past month.

More than $152 million in Ethereum short bets has been liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to data from Coinglass. And 13.2 million ETH has been staked on Ethereum 2.0, a new all-time high for the metric, according to data from Beaconscan.

What's pumping ETH?

It's all about the merge.

Earlier this week the Goerli testnet completed its transition to a proof-of-stake mining mechanism, the final dress rehearsal (after successful testnet merges on Sepolia and Ropsten) before the mainnet merge that is now expected on September 15 or 16.

Testnets are a developmental version of Ethereum that allows developers to experiment before launch.

The Ethereum mainnet's shift from an energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm should enhance overall network efficiency and reduce energy consumption by up to 99%.

The upgrade is also expected to lower Ethereum’s sky-high transactional costs, though there are some who doubt that the post-merge Ethereum will look quite as idyllic as some of the network's core devs have promised.