It’s one of the most anticipated crypto event of 2022. The Merge will see Ethereum move from the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a more efficient Proof-of-Stake system. It is not expected to reduce Ethereum's fees and slow transaction speeds, but it will have a significant impact on the network's energy use.
However, some miners of the current Ethereum chain have a different view. Ethereum mining is a multi-billion dollar industry, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue (sometimes billions) to hardware miners every month. After the Merge, the mining hardware will be useless. There will be a fight to keep this business alive. The ETH miners will protest the Merge by forking into the new ETHPoW chain that retains PoW validation.
No one can be sure how to value this new hard fork. But chances are the value will be greater than zero. Expect huge volatility at the beginning. It is likely that there will be initial selling pressure as a lot of traders will want to monetize their new ETHPoW coins. Generally speaking, nearly every smart contract on the PoW fork will be broken in some capacity. The idea that a fork with PoW consensus could be useful if the Merge fails is also wrong. It would just delay the process until the problems are fixed and with the Merge following a few weeks later.