<p>On this week's show, our host Brian McGleenon is joined by Dankrad Feist, a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. This episode forecasts the disruptive impact of the coming Ethereum 'merge' on the cryptocurrency ecosystem. We look at the impact on the price of Ethereum's native cryptocurrency, ether, which will become a deflationary token following the merge. The world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap will make a full transition from the high energy intensive 'proof of work' method of validating transactions on the blockchain to a 'proof of stake' way of validation, that will only use a fraction of the energy. The move to 'proof of stake' should appeal to institutional finance who are wary of the ESG implications of the carbon-intensive 'proof of work' method. Institutional Finance may wish to invest in the Ethereum network via 'staking' pools and the coming upgrade could have significant implications on the price of ether.</p>
