Cryptos' volatility seen leading to purge of 'Merge frontrunners'

Ether is outperforming Bitcoin for a third consecutive day amid expectations that the intermittent bouts of optimism over the pending upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain will finally take root. 

The native currency of the most commercially important blockchain gained as much as 2% to $1,716 as of 10:51 a.m. in New York. Bitcoin was little changed at about $21,693. Other tokens such as Solana and Cardano were trading on either side of unchanged. 

Speculators have scooped up Ether call options with traders waging the token’s price could rise to around $2,200 in September in the past few weeks, while showing more