John Deaton, Amicus Curiae in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit has raised questions over SEC's take over Ethereum's nature.

Ethereum Merge is set to occur anytime between September 10 to September 20, 2022. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been actively trying to provide regularity clarity over crypto. However, Ethereum, the world's second-largest crypto will be shifting from a proof of work (PoW) system to a proof of stake (PoS). John Deaton, Amicus Curiae in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit has raised questions over SEC's take over Ethereum's nature. In a thread of tweets, the CryptoLaw founder weighs in on speculations that the SEC might go after ETH after its move to proof of stake, or the "Merge." Deaton wrote, "Is ETH safe from Gensler? Ethereum's transition to PoS in September is a dangerous bet on decentralization that could attract the eyes of regulators. Can we truly rule out Gensler suing ETH after the move to PoS?"

He added, "Some fear Gensler will go after ETH because of the growing pressure calling for an IG investigation." The other reason some believe Gensler might go after ETH is to try and mitigate the claim that the SEC is choosing winners and losers through "selective enforcement."

Not only that, in another tweet, Deaton says that XRP, as well as ETH, ALGO, ADA, and XLM, should be considered commodities rather than securities.

Importance of Ethereum Merge

The experts envision the possibility of Ethereum cutting energy costs by 99.95% as "highly realistic." The expert researcher Kyle McDonald said in an interview with Coindesk, "When you're moving from a system that is about generating as many random numbers as fast as possible with 10 million [graphic processing units] across the world, to a system that's running on a few thousand computers that are pretty low energy, it's going to make a huge difference,"

After the Merge, Ethereum will use a "proof-of-stake" system that instead uses an algorithmic lottery to determine who gets to validate transactions and win tokens as a reward for doing so, out of a pool of "takers" who temporarily deposit their coins to help secure the network. Crypto's environmental impact has long been a point regulator and the public count against it. A single Ethereum transaction, for example, consumes about as much energy as an average U.S. household does during a full workweek, Fortune reported last year. That's part of why Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's most visible founder, has been laying the groundwork for the Merge since as early as 2014. The upgrade was meant to take place in 2016 but kept getting pushed back by the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that helps maintain the Ethereum blockchain.

Crypto investors are highly interested in ETH products for the integration of smart contracts and their own ETH blockchain network. Meanwhile, the ETH management has also created a bug bounty for crypto investors to identify any critical bug issue in the Ethereum 2.0 version by offering a reward of up to US$250k. Ethereum 2.0 is ready to release after multiple dress rehearsals on multiple different test networks such as Ropsten, Goerli, and many more. The ETH network has worked on researching, developing, analyzing, testing, specifying, breaking, fixing, and explaining for the successful announcement of the release date of the Ethereum merge.

The Merge, the first of five planned upgrades for the network, may increase transaction speeds by only 10% by reducing block times, according to the report. The upgrade, however, lays the path for the "Surge," which is the next planned upgrade for the network and promises to bring 100,000 transactions-per-second (TPS) capability to the blockchain, the report added. The Merge means that block time will drop to 12 seconds from 13, and that could result in a small decrease in fees and an increase in speed, the note said. Citi says switching from PoW will reduce overall issuance of ether by 4.2% a year, and with ether (ETH) eventually becoming deflationary, this may improve the case for the token as a store of value.

So, when should you buy Ethereum?

Based on expert perspectives, Ethereum 2.0 is supposed to establish a stronghold for the crypto in the DeFi and Web 3.0 industry, leaving little room for Bitcoin to reign as the largest cryptocurrency in the world. There are plenty of assumptions revolving around the market that depict the Merge upgrade will fail to appease investors, but its current price rally proves quite otherwise. According to Hayes, ETH is currently providing massive investment opportunities for buyers, hence, now will be a good time for investors to buy and hold the token to generate massive amounts of profits in the future.