How to better position for the merge
The Ethereum Merge is scheduled to take place on 13 September. Christmas season is here again.
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
ETH holders will soon be airdropped ETH PoW tokens. What should you do to best position yourself?
Here are 7 steps you may consider to fully take advantage of the Merge:
Before we get to the steps, what is happening again?
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
Ethereum is going through an upgrade where it will transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. After the transition, ETH miners can no longer mine. Miners are forking ETH to keep a PoW version so they can continue mining.
1. To get the ETH PoW tokens, you must first hold ETH on a wallet that supports this fork.
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
The best would be to have full custody of your ETH on a hardware wallet. If you are holding ETH on an exchange, your exchange may or may not give you the fork tokens.
For exchanges that support the fork, this is probably the easier option as you get the fork tokens without doing work. Ideally, the exchange supports the trading too. Some exchanges may take months before crediting your account. Do check your exchange policy on the upcoming Merge
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
2. Bridge all your tokens back to ETH mainnet.
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
You will not be getting any ETH PoW for your ETH held on Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche or any other Layer 2 scaling solution. Move them back to mainnet before the Merge to get the ETH PoW tokens.
3. Unwrap all WETH to ETH
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
There will most likely be a DEX on the new ETH PoW chain to help you unwrap your WETH PoW token but why bother searching for it in a new unstable ecosystem? Just unwrap it before the Merge. The best alpha is to get hold of the ETH PoW tokens immediately
4. Remove liquidity from DeFi protocols
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
You will not be getting any ETH PoW tokens for ETH that are being used to provide liquidity. I would withdraw now and provide liquidity again after the Merge. There may be a liquidity crunch on DeFi protocols as more folks do this.
5. Borrow ETH from Aave / Compound
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
You will get ETH PoW for any ETH held during the snapshot. This means it makes sense to borrow as much ETH as possible. Combined with the previous step, I would expect ETH utilization to get close to 100%. Current snapshot of Aave & Compound: pic.twitter.com/LztHCV3LTj
6. Monitor stETH / ETH market
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
You could either buy or sell stETH as we get closer to the Merge depending on what others are doing. Would expect some to sell stETH to ETH to get the PoW airdrop. But if selling becomes too strong, you could buy stETH on the cheap. Last 30d chart: pic.twitter.com/1HApvr00G8
7. Buy the rumor, sell the fact
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
Maybe speculating on ETH PoW is not worth it for you. Currently, ETH PoW IOU is trading at about 2.8% of ETH. ETH will probably be bought up in the hours to the Merge and dumped immediately after. You can choose to sell ETH and take profit then. pic.twitter.com/V4qi9tWwue
We have about 10 days to go to the Merge. I think many markets and protocols will get volatile, messy, and complex especially in the hours before/after Merge.
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
One or more ETH PoW forks may show up. Dug up our old 2017 crypto report on Bitcoin forks and found this. pic.twitter.com/bI4pDpr96S
Will we see another dozen ETH PoW forks coming out? Who knows?
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
But I do know that if I hold my ETH on my non-custodial wallet, I may be eligible to get all these fork tokens. This doesn't mean I will claim all airdrops as some could be scams trying to get my signature/keys.
My strategy for these fork tokens is to sell them all immediately. Almost all the fork tokens are now dead as they are created solely to keep miners temporarily occupied with mining and have no incentive to grow their community and usage.
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
The journey of Google
Their first investment in 1998 was a check for $100,000.
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
They couldn’t deposit it because they hadn’t set up a bank account.
But they celebrated at Burger King.pic.twitter.com/6wvELdILim
Here’s how Google was evolving: pic.twitter.com/kkm9digZHE
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
The first office was in a garage.
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
They rented it from Google’s first marketing manager, Susan Wojcicki.
(she now runs YouTube)
They paid $1,700 a month in rent.
Here’s an early office video tour from the company’s 6th employee:pic.twitter.com/Srjn8acayk
This was the first production server rack: pic.twitter.com/njNA3tBmbY
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Ruth Kedar designed Google’s logo.
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
These were the early iterations: pic.twitter.com/zeRrosLhvX
And, of course, you need business cards: pic.twitter.com/wizmHkxtdP
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
As for the Google Doodle?
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
It’s hard to take a break when you’re running a startup.
The first one was meant to be an out-of-office message when they went to the Burning Man festival. pic.twitter.com/kHSNg9dZBq
Meanwhile, the team was growing… pic.twitter.com/E6WA6XlkUZ
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
They had moved out of the garage…
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
In 1999, Google had a few dozen employees. Staff meetings included birthday cakes, beer and silly string:pic.twitter.com/g87pUIOLyj
The world’s curiosity about Google continued to grow…
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Here’s Sergey explaining Google search in 2001:pic.twitter.com/nImBJkpbGn
Meanwhile, winning the search wars would require Google to lead the way in mobile search…pic.twitter.com/O97yhhSbWR
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Anyone remember this?pic.twitter.com/VQtHZnkF2b
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Google went public in 2004 at a valuation of $23 billion. pic.twitter.com/2YCR9Ilwqt
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
here’s a report from that day:
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
“most of Wall St wanted this to fail”pic.twitter.com/9wxRxXmO2C
Also in 2004…the launch of Gmail. pic.twitter.com/jXEn1JqMcq
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Google Maps launched the next year: pic.twitter.com/QB8TdHipi6
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Also in 2005? The acquisition of Android… pic.twitter.com/4v6pkjaRDV
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
And in 2006? The acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion…pic.twitter.com/9koWtKajSC
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
Chrome would come in 2008…pic.twitter.com/ZZNNo1jU5y
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
And in 2015… a new parent company name, Alphabet:pic.twitter.com/yFsVNAKpZZ
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
We could keep going here, but this 2002 clip from Larry Page sums it up…
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) September 4, 2022
To do something different, have a “healthy disregard for the impossible”:pic.twitter.com/mZHuCJXfPc
