this is a major update to a system that handles trillions in transactions, i'm happy they're taking their time on it.

tbh though very seriously likely this year, all the major infrastructure is in place

And, as ever, the exact same thing was said early last year, too. And the year before, if my memory serves me. I’ll have more faith that it’s actually coming once Star Citizen comes out.

Until it’s actually released, skepticism’s the safest bet.

That's not true. This time last year, the Beacon chain had only been running for a little more than a month. Also the code was not complete to merge Pow/PoS chains. The merge has already happened on Testnet, so literally the full merge could be done on Mainnet tomorrow if the Ethereum core team wanted to.

Speaking of betting,

What do prediction markets say about whether it will be out by what times?