Ether led bitcoin’s seven-day rebound as the Merge approached

CoinMarketCap’s historical snapshot for September 11, 2022 showed ether outperforming bitcoin over the preceding seven days as the market entered Ethereum’s final pre-Merge stretch. Ether was listed at $1,761.80, up 11.67% over seven days, while bitcoin was $21,769.26, up 8.92%. Ether’s lead was therefore 2.75 percentage points, a Coinburn calculation from the vendor’s displayed returns.

The same snapshot put bitcoin’s market capitalization at $416.84 billion and ether’s at $215.52 billion. Over the shorter 24-hour window, however, the pattern reversed: bitcoin was up 0.41%, while ether was down 0.81%. That divergence matters. The seven-day figures captured a broad rebound, but the September 11 reading did not show a one-way rush into ether immediately before Ethereum’s most consequential scheduled protocol change.

A rebound with two catalysts

The move had begun before September 11. Reuters reported on September 9 that bitcoin had risen more than 9% to $21,254, then a two-week high, while ether had gained more than 5% to $1,746, then a three-week peak. The report said market participants did not identify a single crypto-specific trigger. They instead pointed to a weaker U.S. dollar, firmer global equities and optimism ahead of the U.S. inflation release scheduled for September 13.

That context limits what can be inferred from the September 11 snapshot. Bitcoin’s 8.92% seven-day gain was not evidence that the Merge itself drove the entire market. It was consistent with a wider risk-asset rebound. Ether’s additional 2.75-percentage-point gain, however, was consistent with extra attention on Ethereum as the protocol approached its transition.

CoinMarketCap’s numbers are an aggregated historical snapshot, not the execution record of one exchange. The page displays prices, market capitalizations and rolling returns, but those values can differ from venue-specific trades because crypto markets operate continuously and data providers use different exchange sets and calculation methods.

The protocol clock was already running

Ethereum’s protocol plan made September 11 institutionally significant even though the transition had not yet occurred. The Ethereum Foundation had scheduled Bellatrix, the Beacon Chain preparation upgrade, for epoch 144896 on September 6 at 11:34:47 UTC. Paris, the execution-layer transition, would follow when Ethereum’s proof-of-work chain reached a Terminal Total Difficulty of 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The foundation’s contemporaneous announcement gave a September 10–20 expected window and stressed that the precise timing depended on proof-of-work hash rate. Once the threshold was reached, a Beacon Chain validator would produce the next block; under normal network conditions, finalization was expected about two epochs, or roughly 13 minutes, later.

This was operationally different from a conventional upgrade fixed to a block height or clock time. Node operators needed compatible execution and consensus clients working together. Coinbase separately said it expected the transition around September 15 and planned to pause new ETH and ERC-20 deposits and withdrawals briefly as a precaution, while leaving centralized trading available. Coinbase also warned that the Merge would not unlock staked ETH and that users did not need to send assets anywhere to “upgrade.”

What September 11 established

The defensible event-day conclusion is narrow: by September 11, ether had outperformed bitcoin over CoinMarketCap’s seven-day window, but had lagged bitcoin over 24 hours, while exchanges and infrastructure providers prepared for a difficulty-triggered network transition expected during September 10–20.

The data did not establish that the Merge would succeed, that ether would keep outperforming, or that protocol scaling and fees would improve immediately. On September 11, those remained separate questions. The verified record shows a market balancing macro relief, event-specific positioning and operational uncertainty—not a completed technical milestone.