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Rightfully, there is a lot of talk about The Merge and what might happen after it. Will it be successful or not, and so on. I myself have covered some of these topics as well. But I have not really seen anyone talking about the new realities miners will have to face post Merge. And I am not talking about what to mine or whether to continue mining or not.
Getting a new wallet
Unless you simply are switching to mining Ethereum Classic, the odds are fairly high that you will need to find a new wallet that will work with the Coin or Coins, you plan to mine.
I would highly recommend getting an early jump on this and start looking into it already. That way you have one thing already done that hopefully will save you some time and frustration, not having to do it on the same day as the Merge.
Where to sell your Coins?
One of the main things that will hit you while mining other Coins much smaller than Ethereum is suddenly you have to think about when and where to sell the Coins you have mined. What I mean by that is that compared to Ethereum most of the other PoW Coins are not as big and widely accepted as Ethereum.
This means you will have, at least initially, to get used to a new or several new sites and ways to liquidate your Coins. This was not really a problem with Ethereum because it was so big and widely adopted trading it has never really been a problem in recent times. But with the much smaller coins like Flux, Ergo, Ravencoin, or Neoxa just to name a few. This will initially not be the case.
When to sell your Coins?
When to sell your Coins will most likely also play a much bigger part post Merge than it did before. This is in part because initially, the prices will most likely fluctuate a bit more than they are doing today. That means if you need to sell regularly to pay your bills, you need to pay much closer attention to the prices of the Coins.
When selling your coins time is of the essence
A second factor that also most likely will make its presence known, to a much greater extent will be the liquidity of the Coin. Because the Coins are so much smaller than Ethereum they are more often susceptible to running out of liquidity at the place where you are exchanging your Coins. This is also something that you have to take into account. Just because one Dex or Cex has a slightly better price than another. It does not mean you will be able to swap all your Coins there.
Another thing you can do is trade the Coins. But then you might end up with a trade that is taking a long time before it will go through. Unlike Ethereum, the other PoW Coins are not "set and forget" Coins. That might mean your trade will take much longer than you initially planned for. So think twice before using this option.
Ethereum Classic
One particular problem that is fairly unique to Ethereum Classic that you might not be aware of is the Confirmation Time that a transaction has. This is much, much longer than basically most other Coins.
Picture sourced from: Kraken.com full link down below
According to Kracken.com the estimated Confirmation Time for Ethereum Classic is 6.5 days. While some other places have slightly shorter we are still talking about a much, much longer time than other Coins. CRYPTO.COM will take 3-5 days and Coinbase.com will take you 24-48 hours to confirm a deposit. This is a stark contrast to the 5 min or less most other Coins take.
This all means that you are looking to liquidate your Ethereum Classic on a daily base, for tax reasons, or any other reason. You might run into some problems. And this is something you need to also take into account. And as you can see different exchanges vary very much in the amount of time it takes for your deposit to go through.
The reason for this because Ethereum Classic was hacked a lot earlier. And this is a way to try and combat that.
I hope that you have found this post to be of use to you and hopefully I have opened your eyes to some of the extra steps you as a miner now need to factor in. And in the case of you not being a miner, I hope you have found this post interesting either way. =)
If you think I have missed any major things or made some errors please tell me in the comments down below along with your thoughts on this new future for mining. What are your thoughts on this, are you looking forward to it all or are you dreading it?
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See you on the interwebs!
Picture provided by: https://pixabay.com/
