Details of these and other recent top headlines around Ethereum below:

Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs adds Ethereum to its basket of crypto options

Goldman Sachs has announced plans to onboard crypto options for Ethereum in what is seen as another step by the financial institution to improve its presence in this nascent space. This development comes after the Wall Street giant bank launched its first options, completing an initial Bitcoin trade last month.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, the global head of crypto trading at Goldman Sachs Andrei Kazantsev told a client webinar on Tuesday that the Ether options would be coming “in due course,” primarily due to the bank registering a surge in investor interest in that asset class. Kazantsev noted that the soon-to-come Merge with the Beacon Chain has played a factor in this heightened demand by the customers.

Also, George Lewin-Smith, digital assets associate at the bank, confirms that customers have morphed and developed a liking for Ether, much that they now consider it “more of an investable asset class.”

Here’s why Mark Cuban is bullish on ‘the Merge’

American investor and crypto enthusiast Mark Cuban sees a bullish mood on Ethereum’s transition into a PoS chain. The migration is one of the reasons why the billionaire is optimistic Ethereum will flourish, Fortune reports.

The Ethereum mainnet merge with the Beacon Chain has widely been lauded as the network’s most significant update since its 2015 launch. Ethereum shall progressively transition from an energy-intensive proof of work protocol into a less taxing proof of stake protocol. The transition would allow Ethereum to become a greener chain, massively reducing the power consumed when completing transactions – up to 99.98% lower consumption.

The migration from mining to staking is expected to ship this summer, barring any developmental records.

Another reason why Cuban foresees an optimistic future is that Ether will likely become deflationary in a post-Merge environment. The supply of Ether could massively reduce, thereby translating in an upward trend in the price of the native token.

The Dallas Mavericks owner, however, told Fortune that while he owns some ETH and Ethereum NFTs, he hasn’t staked any of it in the PoS Beacon Chain. At the moment, the Beacon Chain has as much as 11,192,226 ETH on its staking contract, according to data provided by Etherscan.io.

Notably, Cuban was initially not too enthusiastic about any major crypto-asset outside of Bitcoin, but that changed when Ethereum included DeFi and NFT functionality that made smart contracts possible.

Increased DeFi activity sends transaction fees on Ethereum soaring

Ethereum’s current one-day fee sits at $23,598,001 at writing – about 54 times that of Bitcoin. Such a trend is also displayed in the seven-day average fees, where the DeFi network is seeing fees up to 4X those recorded by Bitcoin.

According to data from analytics platform CryptoFees.info, the Ethereum weekly average fee by April 5 was $3,360,658 compared to Bitcoin’s $511,541. This is a continuation of a long-term trend in which the fees incurred on Ethereum are often multiples that of Bitcoin.

However, it’s a falling trend as Ethereum’s fees have declined significantly in recent months. Santiment notes that the average gas fee sat at $5.81 on April 6 compared to as much as $69.57 on May 11 last year. While the minus of transaction fees has often plagued the network, updates slated for the coming months will likely enhance the performance of the blockchain.

Bloomberg estimates the ‘actual’ value of Ethereum to be $6,000

According to MarketWatch, a new report by Bloomberg Intelligence indicates the real value of the native token of the largest DeFi ecosystem is significantly higher than the current market prices suggest.

At the start of April, Ethereum surged, dwelling in the $3,400 range. Latest market activity shows it hit resistance at around $3,500, consequently retreating to $3,260. According to Blomberg’s discounted cash flow model, the actual figures should be 180% higher than market numbers, which is a figure it values at $6,128. The report explained that Ethereum is morphing into an “equity-like instrument,” courtesy of the coming migration to PoS consensus.

Bloomberg Intelligence explained that in a post-Merge scene, Ethereum stakers would likely relish “higher payouts and reduced issuance,” resulting from a surge in demand for total fees paid and blockchain space. It noted that the contrast could, however, still happen.

An assessment floated by the report was that Ethereum’s cash flow could go up by 30% over the next three years before touching terminal growth in 2035. It also projected the revenue collected in 2022 could hit 30% higher than in 2021. Throughout last year, the Ethereum network recorded $9.8 billion in transaction fees.

To learn more about Ethereum visit our Investing in Ethereum guide.