Will Ethereum Merge hopium continue, or is it a bull trap?

Ethereum is outperforming the broader cryptocurrency market as the highly anticipated Merge approaches, but the bigger picture is still largely bearish.

Ethereum (ETH) has gained a whopping 48% over the past seven days, outperforming its big brother Bitcoin, which has only managed to achieve 19% in the same period. It’s also up 66% from its market cycle bottom of $918 on June 19, reaching its current price of $1549.

However, the current Ethereum rally could be a bull trap with the macroeconomic clouds darkening. A bull trap is a signal indicating that a declining trend in a crypto asset has reversed and is heading upwards when it will actually continue downwards.

The primary driver of recent momentum for the asset has been linked to announcements regarding its final switch to proof-of-stake, which has been slated for September 19.

The Merge will reduce the network’s energy consumption by more than 99%. However, it will not necessarily reduce transaction fees significantly as this will occur when scaling takes place via sharding which is expected sometime next year.

On July 19, a Coinbase report on the Merge explained that the next major step, and last dress rehearsal, is the Goerli testnet Merge which has been planned for August 11.

Goerli is the most battle-tested Ethereum environment with the most user activity and the closest simulation of the real thing.

Is This Me who is Thinking that Ethereum will start the BULL RUN with his Merge ??#eth #Ethereum #ethereum2 #ethereum #Bullish #bullish pic.twitter.com/oSHDKTz6vw

— Crypto Diamond (@ImCryptoDimond) July 19, 2022

While the major upgrade is the fundamental driver of current Ethereum market sentiment, the asset is still trading down 68% from its November 2021 all-time high.

There have also been concerns that a significant amount of ETH may flood the market after the Merge and its release from its staking smart contracts.

However, director of research at 21Shares, Eliézer Ndinga, told Cointelegraph that this…