regarding price, one can argue it both ways. at the point of the merge, most assets on ethereum are risky: if you were a uniswap LP and the two assets you were pooling chose different forks as their “official” one (most meaningful for off-chain collateralized assets like USDC), you can bet arbitrageurs would have left you holding the worthless asset on both chains. accordingly, Eth became the “safest” asset during the fork, since both forks will recognize it. that would create buy pressure leasing up to the fork, which goes away after the fork.
but there’s a million arguments on both sides of that picture. i think the strongest argument for price direction is that PoS miners are less likely to sell their Eth immediately after mining it than PoW miners because the latter purchased mining equipment with USD and want to repay that, whereas the former are invested in Ethereum itself instead of their mining equipment. also it sounds like block rewards are decreased with PoS, so the currency itself is deflationary now (?)
but there’s a million arguments on both sides of that picture. i think the strongest argument for price direction is that PoS miners are less likely to sell their Eth immediately after mining it than PoW miners because the latter purchased mining equipment with USD and want to repay that, whereas the former are invested in Ethereum itself instead of their mining equipment. also it sounds like block rewards are decreased with PoS, so the currency itself is deflationary now (?)