The developers have successfully upgraded Ethereum, however, the network’s underlying asset, Ether (ETH), is reacting negatively to the Merge fork.
The largest altcoin has fallen over 8% to $1459 in the last 24 hours. Every week, ETH's capitalization fell by almost 14% to $178.884 billion.
Bitcoin fell 4% to $19,753.
Other digital currencies also lose value on Friday. The largest altcoins Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and Dogecoin (DOGE) retreated to $0.461, $32.59, and $0.059 respectively. The capitalization of the cryptocurrency market on September 16 decreased to $955.882 billion.
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The fall of bitcoin and ether was preceded by an increase in the exchange balance of the leading digital currencies. Investors have been preparing for a massive dump, over the past few days, they have been sending cryptocurrency to trading floors. ETH in 2022 collapsed by more than 50%.
Many analysts believed that the Merge update would increase the investment attractiveness of the altcoin.
In August, the cryptocurrency was aggressively pumped up by speculators on the hype around the upcoming fork. But already in September, the mood changed dramatically, and sellers became more active in the market.