When is it - The Ethereum Merge is scheduled for sometime on Thursday September 15th. More specifically if you google search the ethereum merge you get a more accurate countdown. It is 2 days and 6 minutes away at the time of writing.
What is the Merge - It's a term to refer to an Ethereum upgrade that will reduce the blockchain's energy consumption by approximately 99%. It will transition from the proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof of stake. The update is 6 years in the making is arguably one of the important crypto events of all time after the creation of bitcoin and ethereum. It is an important step for scaling the ethereum blockchain and ecosytem.
Why should you care - If you are an existing Ethereum holder or developer this is a positive step for the blockchains future growth and adoption. The ethereum ecosystem is huge and is the foundation for decentralized finance websites like uniswap, blockchain domains like the ethereum naming system (.eth addresses), and the most popular blockchain for NFT activity on Opensea just for starters.
The Ethereum network can currently handle 30 transactions per second (tps), but the longer term ethereum upgrades (not the Merge) will aim to handle 100,000 (TPS). For reference bitcoin's tps is about 5-7 tps. Mastercard can handle 5000 tps and Visa can do 24000 tps.
What do existing Ethereum holders have to do - According to Ethereum.org users do not have to do anything with your existing funds or wallet before the merge. Be on high alert for scam trying toto take advantage of users during the transition. Don't send your ETH anywhere to attempt to upgrade to ETH2. There is no ETH 2 token.
According to Ethereum.org the Merge will not reduce gas fees in the short term
If the Merge is successful the positive publicity may push the price of Ethereum north of $2000 US, but this is just my personal opinion. There are a number of macro factors that are negatively impacting the overall cryptocurrency market such as inflation, the US government increase of interest rates, and the overall cryptocurrency market is in a so called "crypto winter"
The Final Countdown to the Ethereum Merge
This video will go into more depth into what you need to know about the Ethereum Merge especially for Coinbase users
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