CoinGecko co-founder Bobby Ong has revealed his strategy for all potential fork tokens that may emerge as the result of Ethereum’s transition to Proof of Stake.
The Ethereum Merge is scheduled to take place on 13 September. Christmas season is here again.
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:
— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) September 5, 2022
How to obtain fork tokens
In August, Chinese miner Chandler Guo announced that he wants to fork the Ethereum blockchain ahead of its full transition into PoS in order to keep its existing Proof of Work consensus model. Besides Guo’s EthereumPoW, the website of the Wagmi33 Foundation also lists EthereumFair and EtherDAO as projects that might potentially issue tokens after The Merge.
EthereumPoW (ETHW) tokens will be issued at a 1:1 rate to any address that holds ETH at the time of The Merge. This means that in order to obtain your ETHW, you simply need to connect your Ethereum wallet to the ETHPoW blockchain, for example by using Chainlist.org.
Note that you need to hold ETH in unwrapped form on your Ethereum mainnet wallet before the fork. Furthermore, you cannot use them as collateral on DeFi platforms or supply them as liquidity to a DEX. Otherwise, the respective smart contract where your ETH tokens are stored will receive the ETHW and most likely lock them up forever. The same goes for wrapped or staked Ether tokens and ETH held on L2 or alternative L1 networks.
Already, several centralized exchanges have expressed their support for the fork and listed IOU contracts for ETHPoW. If you hold ETH on these exchanges, the corresponding amount of ETHW should be automatically credited to you. On exchanges that do not support the fork, you will not receive ETHW, unless the exchange decides to list the token at a later point in time.
Ong reveals speculation strategies
In a lenghty Twitter thread, Bobby Ong, who co-founded the token price information portal CoinGecko, has dropped some more complex trading strategies ahead of The Merge. While ETH used as collateral will not receive the forked ETHW, he noted that it is possible to use other tokens as collateral instead and borrow ETH.
He further stated that the markets for staked ETH might be worthwhile to watch. As traders unstake their tokens in preparation for the fork, he expects the prices of stETH to drop, so it might be possible to buy them at a discount after The Merge. Also, he expects traders to pump the ETH price in the hours before The Merge only to sell their tokens again afterwards, in order to capitalize on the fork.
Overall, Ong is bearish on ETHW however and plans to sell all fork tokens 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.
According to most recent estimations, The Merge will happen either on May 14 or May 15. Due to fluctuations in Ethereum’s hashrate, the exact time is still subject to change.
