The Merge did not save Ethereum from a 14.5% drop in September

Despite the successful The Merge upgrade, Ethereum’s price in September fell by 14.5%, according to report ForkLog.

After migrating to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, the asset began to fall toward a local low from the start of July, dragging the rest of the market down.

Bitcoin fell 3.1% for the month. However, the Bitcoin dominance index slipped below 39% — the level last seen in January 2018.

Among mid-cap assets (from $200 million), Quant Network (QNT) led with a 49.18% gain for the month.

On the backdrop of progress in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Ripple, the XRP coin rose more than 42%.

Ravencoin (RVN) posted notable gains, as a portion of Ethereum miners migrated to its network.

Among the losers were tokens of smart-contract platforms and decentralized exchanges.

Against Bitcoin’s sideways trend, public miners and crypto-industry companies showed negative momentum in September.

In the community, discussions began about which crypto-mining companies could become the next “problematic firms”. Arcane Research noted that many public miners reflected unrealized losses on their balance sheets, despite a strong 2021.

At month end, mining company and infrastructure provider Compute North filed for bankruptcy.

Hut 8 Mining, one of the first to report September results, said it had significantly reduced Bitcoin mining.

By month-end the majority of top-20 DeFi tokens by market cap were in the red. The worst performers were Balancer (BAL) and DeFiChain (DFI). The former fell 31.25%, the latter 25.92%.

However, Compound (COMP) rose nearly 30% on the back of launching a lending service for institutional investors. PancakeSwap (CAKE) rose nearly 19% after the community approved integrations of decentralized exchanges on networks other than BNB Chain.

The NFT sector in September continued to contract. OpenSea’s trading volume fell to $348 million for the month — a figure on par with the values of mid-2021.

Trading volumes of the largest NFT collections declined by tens of percent. The exceptions were Ethereum Name Service domains and Immutable’s Gods Unchained trading card game.

Sponsor of the \”Bitcoin Industry in Numbers\” column — Bybit, crypto-traders ecosystem.

Earlier, amid NFT market cooling, fashion house Hugo Boss announced the launch of its own collection.

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