The crypto market witnessed the DeFi summer of 2020, where decentralized finance applications like Compound and Uniswap turned Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) into yield-bearing assets via yield farming and liquidity mining rewards. The price of Ether nearly doubled to $490 as the total liquidity across DeFi protocols quickly surged to $10 billion.
Toward the end of 2020 and early 2021, the COVID-19-induced quantitative easing across global markets was in full effect, causing a mega-bull run that lasted almost a year. During this time, Ether’s price increased nearly ten times to a peak above $4,800.
After the euphoric bullish phase ended, a painful cool-down journey was exacerbated by the UST-LUNA crash which began in early 2022. This took Ether’s price down to $800. A ray of hope eventually arrived in the third quarter as the market experienced a positive rally led by the Ethereum Merge narrative.
The shift to an environmentally-friendly proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism was a big step forward. The event also reduced Ether inflation post-merge. During a lead-up to the Merge on Sept. 15, 2021, ETH peaked at over $2,000. However, the bullish momentum faded quickly, turning the Merge into a buy-the-rumor and sell-the-news event.
A similar bullish…
