The four most famous international exchanges:

Binance INTL	OKX INTL	Gate.io INTL	Huobi INTL
China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL

Note: The above exchange logo is the official website registration link, and the text is the APP download link.

Coin Circle (120BTC.com) News: Ethereum confirmed this week that it will launch a two-stage merger and upgrade step on September 6, transitioning from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. Bank of America
A Friday report from the BofA (BofA) suggests that Ethereum may continue to lose upward momentum until the merger is completed.

“Coindesk” reported that Bank of America pointed out in the report that the price rise of Ether (ETH) from mid-July to mid-August, which rose more than 100% during the period, may be as investors seek to better understand the impact of the merger. Will continue to fade.

In addition, the bank expects that competing chains such as BNB, Tron, Avalanche and Solana will continue to gain market share until Ethereum overcomes headwinds such as scalability and high fees. Bank analyst Alkesh
Shah said in the report: Investors may realize that Ethereum’s seemingly imminent transition to PoS will not solve the problem of scalability or high transaction fees. While the merger may drive ETH’s short-term price higher, the long-term outlook for ETH remains lackluster given weak macroeconomic sentiment and Bitcoin technical indicators pointing to the downside.

 ETH whales transfer assets to exchanges before merger

With the merger looming, ETH price and market bullish enthusiasm appear to be cooling down. Data from blockchain data analytics firm Santiment shows that top whale addresses have sent large amounts of ETH to exchanges over the past three months.

“The holding gap between Ethereum’s top 10 largest non-exchange addresses and exchange addresses is closing as Ethereum moves towards consolidation in 3 weeks. Since May 10, these top non-exchange ETH holdings of addresses decreased by 11%, while exchange-based whale address ETH holdings surged by 78%.”

Cointelegraph noted that typically cryptocurrency inflows into exchanges reflect bearish sentiment and may indicate that whales expect prices to move lower in the near future. Many market analysts also believe that the merger will be a "buy the rumor, sell the news" event, and that ETH prices will rebound after the merger date is confirmed, but may eventually see a price drop after the merger.

Ethereum’s top 10 exchange and non-exchange wallet holdings

 Powell was hawkish, U.S. stocks plummeted, BTC fell 8%, and ETH fell below 1,500

On Friday, Federal Reserve Chairman Powell made clear hawkish remarks in his speech at the Jackson Hole annual meeting, emphasizing that he would not back down in the fight against rapid inflation, although the U.S. economy will face some pain in the future. "Restoring price stability may require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time. The historical record strongly warns against premature easing of policy." The possibility of an aggressive interest rate hike in September has increased significantly, and U.S. stocks have fallen sharply.

Performance of the four major U.S. stock indexes on the 26th:

   The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,008.38 points, or 3.03%, to close at 32,283.4 points.

   The Nasdaq plunged 497.55 points, or 3.94%, to close at 12,141.71 points.

   The S&P 500 index fell 141.46 points, or 3.37%, to close at 4,057.66 points.

   The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost 172.6 points, or 5.81%, to close at 2,798.4 points.

The two major mainstream currencies were also affected by hawkish remarks. BTC fell by more than 8%, testing the US$20,000 mark this morning, and reported at US$20,310 at the time of writing; while ETH fell by nearly 13%, once falling below US$1,500. The decline has been as high as 22.7% in the past two weeks.