The upcoming Ethereum Merge might be the death of Bitcoin and its prolonged ruling

Darkness looms over the Bitcoin network, and experts predict a further price fall in the future. The reason is that after the Ethereum blockchain switches to a drastically less energy-intensive method of validating transactions, known as "proof-of-stake," investors and regulators may realize the energy-intensive method that both Bitcoin and Ethereum use now, called "proof-of-work," was never really necessary.

As further reasons for Bitcoin's impending fall, experts have cited the "climate crisis" and Bitcoin's massive use of energy. They believe that Bitcoin doesn't have the coordination like Ethereum to leave proof of work and hence it could be "the first to be regulated away." Crypto's energy consumption has become a major bone of contention for environmental activists and governments. The situation is so dire that bitcoin might never see $69,000 again. The cryptocurrency traded close to that mark last November.

On the other hand, Ethereum's switch, a software update called "the Merge," is expected to happen this month, and one expected benefit is that not as many computers will be required to keep the blockchain going. The experts envision the possibility of Ethereum cutting energy costs by 99.95% as "highly realistic." The expert researcher Kyle McDonald said in an interview with Coindesk, "When you're moving from a system that is about generating as many random numbers as fast as possible with 10 million [graphic processing units] across the world, to a system that's running on a few thousand computers that are pretty low energy, it's going to make a huge difference,"

After the Merge, Ethereum will use a "proof-of-stake" system that instead uses an algorithmic lottery to determine who gets to validate transactions and win tokens as a reward for doing so,  out of a pool of "stakers" who temporarily deposit their coins to help secure the network. Crypto's environmental impact has long been a point regulator and the public count against it. A single Ethereum transaction, for example, consumes about as much energy as an average U.S. household does during a full workweek, Fortune reported last year. That's part of why Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's most visible founder, has been laying the groundwork for the Merge since as early as 2014. The upgrade was meant to take place in 2016 but kept getting pushed back by the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that helps maintain the Ethereum blockchain.