Navigating the Ethereum Merge: Risks and Opportunities

Kevin Zhou, co-founder of Galois Capital, and Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute, discuss how to trade the Ethereum Proof of Work fork, what the market is telling about the Merge, and whether the Merge affects Bitcoin. 

• what will happen at the time of the Merge according to Kevin and whether there’s uncertainty
• when the ETH Proof of Work chain will emerge and how that affects trading opportunities
• the mistakes of the ETHPoW team, like repealing EIP-1559
• what percentage of ETH market cap ETHPoW will accrue
• what the first few blocks of ETHPoW will be like
• what the strategies are to earn the ETHPoW airdrop and what the on-chain activity looks like
• whether there is an “up-only” monoculture in Ethereum
• what stETH is, how it should be priced and what the futures market indicates
• where the value of a chain comes from and the likelihood of ETHPoW failing catastrophically
• how to protect from replay attacks
• the price action of ETH after the Merge
• how ETH becoming deflationary affects Bitcoin’s narrative as digital gold
• how the ESG-friendly image of Proof of Stake could affect the narratives of ETH and BTC

Crypto.com

Ava Labs

a16z

Kevin:

• Twitter

Evgeny:

• Twitter

Episode Links

Previous Coverage of Unchained on the Merge:

• Preston Van Loon on Ethereum's Merge and His Lawsuit Against Treasury
• Arthur Hayes, Former Ethereum Skeptic, on Why the Merge Makes Him Bullish on ETH 

• With the Merge, Will Ethereum Take Over Bitcoin’s Title as Digital Gold?
• Why Kevin Zhou Believes Ethereum Will Have 3 Forks After the Merge
• Post-Merge, If Lido Becomes Dominant, What Does That Mean for Ethereum?

ETH Proof of Work:

• ChainID missing; and the request from Coinbase
• Kevin’s analogy

• CoinDesk article

• ETHPow Token 

• Summary of Kevin’s thoughts

• ETHPoW team’s promise to abolish EIP-1559

• ETHPoW first blocks

• Tether supports PoS

• Circle (USDC) supports PoS

ETH Trade

• Ether’s backwardation
• Eth-Flexive by Arthur Hayes
• Whether Ethereum’s Merge is priced in
• Gauntlet’s view on the Merge
• BTC correlation with stocks

ETH Post-Merge Dynamics:

• Onchain Wizard post
• Cumberland on the Ethereum dynamics after the merge 
• Miles Suter on the implications of the Merge

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