Ethereum completes long-awaited merge

Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith discusses the completion of ethereum’s long-awaited merge and why it matters.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JULIE HYMAN: Let's talk crypto now for thing three. Ethereum's massive overhaul also known as "the merge," has finally taken effect, shifting the cryptocurrency platform to a more environmentally-sustainable framework. It happened in the early hours this morning after years of delays and experimentation.

Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith is here with more. David, I read that 41,000 people watched the live stream of the sort of celebration around this. There was a merge song that they did during that time. I don't know if you were tuned in, but it definitely feels like there was a lot of excitement over this happening, seemingly without too many issues.

DAVID HOLLERITH: Absolutely, and it runs along with the theme that we're seeing across other markets, which is that not much has happened with the price of Ethereum's native cryptocurrency Ether.

But in general, for the blockchain moving sort of towards this future where it's expected to, you know, process a lot of payments and, you know, sort of be an actual commercial settlement layer in the internet, this merge needed to happen, at least according to the developer's team.

So as a result-- this has been touched on since 2014, actually before Ethereum was created. So this is a massive, massive achievement just to see that the developer team, which is decentralized-- there's no CEO-- has been able to make this change. And the change essentially eliminates cryptocurrency miners. Instead, there are people who pledge assets on the blockchain.

The mistakes involved were minimum. Most people have seen the changes as being smoother than expected. But that being said, obviously, since the CPI release, cryptocurrency has definitely been weighed down. And not much is happening in the market.

This is typically often the case being that it's sort of a "sell the news" kind of event-- or excuse me, or "sell the event" kind of story. But right now, you know, I think that, in general, a lot of crypto-enthusiasts are pretty happy about this outcome.

BRAD SMITH: Yahoo Finance's own David Hollerith joining us with the breakdown on all things this Ethereum merge. And we're gonna continue to see how crypto prices move off of that. Thanks so much, David. Appreciate it.