Due to the euphoria surrounding the Merge upgrade, the price of ETH sharply increased. ETH gained more than 90% from the $1,000 low in June before retreating. The macro factors have overshadowed the optimism of the Merge improvement. Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated last week that the institution would not hesitate to continue raising interest rates. Powell emphasized that the inflation rate is still too high for the typical consumer even if it decreases.
Thus, more quantitative tightening measures might significantly increase the pressure on the share and cryptocurrency markets. The rising S&P 500-Ethereum correlation may also affect the price of ETH.
The Ethereum PoW blockchain currently consumes more than 82.1 TWh of energy annually, equivalent to the energy needs of a country with more than 19 million people. Because of their stringent validation criteria, PoW blockchains need a lot of energy.
Users need a computer or other hardware that can perform complex computational tasks, like Ethereum's Keccak-256 challenge, which calls for strong processors that consume a lot of electricity to operate, maintain, and relax. The proof-of-stake consensus, which uses a new approach to protect the web and address the issue of carbon emissions, is what the Ethereum software engineers have been attempting to implement on the blockchain for years.