Bitcoin climbs as inflation update nears, ether loses steam ahead of its Merge

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has outshined ethereum (ETH-USD) in late Monday afternoon trading as investors weigh the latter's highly-anticipated Merge this week to Proof-of-Stake from Proof-of-Work. With all three major U.S. stock indices ending the session in the green, bitcoin (BTC-USD) climbed 3.8% to $22.33K at 5:40 p.m. ET, as investors' risk appetite expands on the eve of key inflation data. Ether (ETH-USD), though, slipped 1.2% to $1.71K, but still up nearly 14% in the past week vs. BTC's 19% upswing. Ether's so-called Merge is expected to lead to a significant reduction (99%) in the network's energy consumption, thus alleviating environmental concerns raised by regulators and wary institutional investors. But there are risks involved "that could make the event messy in the short term," warned GlobalBlock analyst Marcus Sotiriou.. For instance, "many people in the ecosystem may not be ready to process the new chain, as they have not updated their software," and "some of the APIs could break in ways which many people cannot predict," he explained. Cowen analyst Stephen Glagola explored a number of risks surrounding the long-awaited Merge, including "1) nodes failing to upgrade for the Merge, 2) technical issues/bugs could present themselves and result in software client failures, and 3) there could be unanticipated issues/breakdowns in the ecosystem," he wrote in a note to clients. Another potential cause behind Ether's (ETH-USD) ...