If you have Ethereum (ETH) bitcoin you do not need to do anything to get ready for ETH 2.0 (ETH v2) ETH will automatically convert during the process.  This is not a hard fork, or new coin, but an upgrade to the ETH. 

If you want to speed up the process and take advantage of an investment / staking opportunity then some exchanges like Coin Base will help you do that in 2021.

 When ETH was designed it was not expect for the coin to get as high as it it today.

Thus the creation of ETH 2.0 – it will be using the (PoS method) Proof of Stake, instead of typical (PoW) mining this reduces the energy costs and labor on keeping the network running.

ETH v2 will break the block chain into shards which will increase the throughput for processing data to scale and manage transactions similar to VISA or PayPal. This should make the GAS FEE very small even if the value of ETHv2 increases. We know GAS Fees increase as the load on the block chain increases, currently ETH can support up to 45 transactions per second, the new ETH 2.0 is expect to support 100,000 transactions per second.

**ETH 15 to 45 compared to ETH 2.0 at 25,000 to 1000,000 per second, this should keep the GAS Fee very low.**

Part of the rollout should happen this year and we should see the GAS FEE begin to do down. The newest updates say they expect the merger of ETH1 and ETH 2.0 to be completed this year. The process is happening faster than original expected.

**Major changes in ETH 2.0**

(PoS) Proof of Stake:
Switches from mining Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) the new practice which costs less to maintain.

Sharding:
The split the block chain into shards (small chucks) so that everyone does not have to validate the whole block chain. It makes the network more efficient and faster. The shards are being shuffled around by validators to void manipulation. They are controlled by a Beacon Chain that directly communicates with the shards and coordinates the shard shuffling.

Validators:
They are responsible for the infrastructure and maintenance
* Propose and add blocks to Beacon Chain (primary chain) and one of the shard chains
* Test and confirm validity of the beacon and shard chain.
* Report malicious behavior by other validators. (spy on each other)

Overall these major upgrades will put ETH on the top of the food chain for bitcoins and make the bitcoin more expandable for future upgrades and changes in the coming years.

Update in 2022:

The full release of Ethereum 2.0 is not expected to complete till end of 2022, following the first phase’s launch in 2020. Initially slated for a 2019 release, Ethereum 2.0 has undergone several hefty delays during its development period because of COVID and other concerns.  First phase of conversion from ETH to ETH 2.0 began in 1 Dec 2020 and so far 1 of 3 phases have been completed.

Update in 2023 March:

The full release of Ethereum 2.0 is released:

Ethereum 2.0 is far more efficient than the original Ethereum, which could only manage 15 transactions per second. It can now handle up to 100,000 transactions per second.  

Buy and Sell ETH2

Ethereum 2 (ETH 2) can be purchased and traded on Coinbase.

Ethereum Shanghai

The next big upgrade is Shanghai and expected to happen in April of 2023.  Most people expect after this upgrade for the value of ETH2 to increase.

What is Ethereum Shanghai upgrade:

The Ethereum cryptocurrency network’s so-called Shanghai upgrade is a hard fork slated to launch in March 2023. The Shanghai upgrade will let holders of ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, unstake the assets for the first time, giving them greater access to their holdings.

So all those holders will be able to unstake and sell if they wish to at that point, but since the value is expected to increase. I do not expect that many to unstake and sell. 

As of March 08 2023 – I am confident that ETH2 is still on track to replace BTC as the lead bitcoin in the future.