The cryptocurrency market and its participants are getting ready for the upcoming Merge update on Ethereum that will most certainly affect almost every digital asset out there. While some coins that will benefit from the transition are rallying, others are desperately trying to reclaim what they lost previously.
XRP is not getting on the Merge train
The Merge rally already happened on the market back when the update's date was released publicly. Numerous assets, including XRP, suddenly gained more than 20% to their value.
Due to the speculative nature of the rally, XRP could not gain a foothold above the local resistance level and tumbled down shortly after, now trading at $0.3. From a technical standpoint, XRP dropped below the important trendline, which acted as a short-term support level previously.
At press time, XRP is desperately trying to get back into the trend as it will most likely miss the short-term rally caused by the Merge update if it fails to crawl back above $0.36 price level.
Ethereum Classic is in strong rally
In the last 24 hours, Ethereum Classic gained more than 25% to its value. In addition to the market price, we are seeing a swift increase in the hashrate of the network. The volatile move on the market correlates with the Ethereum Bellatrix update - the last step ahead of the Merge implementation.
The key factor behind the massive rally is investors' belief in the intrinsic growth of the network after a large part of Ethereum's hashrate moves to Ethereum Classic, justifying its reputation as the "true'' Ethereum.
Originally, Ethereum Classic was created as a reaction to events that happened with Ethereum back in 2016, when the network suffered a major hack. With every update, both chains moved away from each other, becoming independent projects.
The Merge update will move two networks even further from each other. From all the alternatives, Ethereum Classic will most likely become the "main PoW network" as no other candidate is showing such rapid growth in value or hashrate.
Meanwhile, some industry experts believe a newly forked ETH PoW will beat ETC in terms of hashrate and will most likely be the main way to mine Ethereum.
The U.S. dollar is not stopping
Unfortunately for cryptocurrency investors, the U.S. dollar's rally is nowhere near an end as the DXY index is still rallying upward despite what seemed like a correction yesterday. The reversal pattern on the chart did not work out as intended, and the currency was still rallying.
The continuous uptrend on the U.S. dollar will keep on pressuring the digital assets market, considering its main effect, which pushed investors away from risk-on assets, including cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
As for now, the next event that might push the value of the dollar back to lower levels would be the CPI data release on Sept. 13, which coincidentally happens on almost the same day as Ethereum's Merge.