The Ethereum Merge is scheduled to go live in less than a day, which would move the network completely from a proof of work mechanism to a proof of stake mechanism. This essentially puts Ethereum miners out of business, meaning they have to find somewhere else to move their mining machines to. Like always, Ethereum Classic has been there to pick up the slack as miners move their equipment over to the forked network.
Ethereum Classic Mops It Up
With the Merge coming, Ethereum miners have had to find alternative places to move their mining capacity. Ethereum Classic presents an opportunity for these miners to put their equipment into it. A move that has caused a surge in not only the price of the digital asset but a significant rise in the mining hashrate.
As Ethereum miners move to Classic, the hash rate has jumped more than 150% in only two months. This is even with a small percentage of Ethereum miners moving their activities over. However, despite Ethereum Classic being a GPU mineable coin, it is impossible to take the entire hash rate of Ethereum completely.
In light of this, Ethereum miners have also moved to other GPU mineable coins such as Ravencoin. Just like Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin saw a jump in its price and hash rate with the move, but they still fall short of being able to take the entire Ethereum hashrate.
ETC hashrate grows 150% | Source: Arcane Research
The dilemma for these miners comes because ETH mining equipment cannot be used to mine bitcoin. It is also speculated that all of the GPU mineable coins in the crypto market is only able to absorb 15% of the mineable power of the ETH blockchain. After this, mining becomes unprofitable for the miners. So it is possible that the majority of ETH miners will end up with millions of dollars worth of machines that are no longer useful for mining activities.
What Happens From Here?
It is impossible to completely pinpoint what will happen to Ethereum miners after the Merge. One thing that has been prominent throughout the last month has been the introduction of a hard fork of the ETH proof of work network.
ETH drops to $1,591 | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
With this, miners may be able to keep some of their hashrate on this forked network, making sure they can continue to make money from mining activities while also moving some of the mining power to other networks.
It is also possible that the small GPU mineable coins will grow larger from the new interest from ETH miners. This could mean they could take a larger share of the mining power, but the vast majority of ETH hash rate will still have nowhere to go after the Merge is complete.
