Ethereum and Bitcoin are struggling to recover from last week's sell-off. In the meantime, the world's biggest Ethereum mining pool, Ethermine, has announced it will end PoW Ethereum mining.
"An accurate countdown timer will be available on the miner dashboard. You can continue to mine ether until the countdown has reached zero," Ethermine said in a blog post.
The platform plans to end ETH mining as soon as The Merge takes place. The blockchain's transition to a proof-of-stake mechanism (PoS) is expected to occur on September 15, 2022. Now, many community members are wondering where all ETH miners will go and what cryptocurrency they will mine after The Merge is complete.
Ethermine is the world's biggest ETH mining pool, with 262.79 terahash per second (TH/s) dedicated to the Ethereum chain. The second-biggest Ethereum mining pool, F2pool, commands only 127.48 TH/s. In terms of Ethereum Classic (ETC) mining, F2pool holds the top spot, with Ethermine being in second place.
Ethermine miners could possibly switch to Ethereum Classic. Over the past several days, the ETC network's hashrate increased by 39%, reaching a record high level of 38 TH/s on August 20, 2022. None of the other Ethash-based tokens, such as RVN, ERGO, and BEAM, have seen similar hashrate increases.
"The mining phase of Ethereum will come to an end on the 15th of September 2022. After this date, it will no longer be possible to mine ether on the Ethereum network using graphic cards (GPUs) or ASICs," Ethermine added. "As a consequence of this transition, the Ethermine Ethereum mining pool will switch to withdraw-only mode once the Proof-of-Work mining phase has ended."
The mining pool's announcement followed a proposal for an Ethereum PoW fork, ETHW. While some exchanges have already listed ETHW, it is currently unclear how much hashrate will support the fork.
Even though the report is unlikely to influence Ethereum, ETH bulls could still lose the closest support at $1,560, making a continuing bullish scenario unlikely at this moment. Ethereum will have to regain $1,650 to reverse upwards – from there, it could surpass $1,700 and test $1,740. Its further target would be $1,820. If the instrument remains under pressure, bulls will likely come into play near $1,560. A breakout below this level would send Ethereum to the low at $1,490, as well as $1,420 further below.
Bitcoin bulls failed to push BTC back to $21,400. As investors continue to become more risk-averse, the pressure on BTC will likely increase. The $20,800 level is key for bulls, as a drop towards this level for the third time could prove fatal for bullish traders. If Bitcoin breaks below this level, it could fall towards $19,966. Below it lie the lows at $19,232 and $18,600. Demand for BTC would increase only if the cryptocurrency settles above $21,500. Bitcoin would have to break above the resistance at $22,180 and $22,670 to begin a new uptrend. Settling in that area would open the way towards the highs at $23,180 and $23,680.
