Ethereum price recovers as its governing foundation reveals new rebranding strategy
In light of the Ethereum Foundation's plans to get rid of its current ETH2 branding, the altcoin has proceeded to rise by nearly 4%.
- Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently hinted at the possibility of the video streaming platform adopting NFTs sometime later this year.
- A white-hat hacker from Portland has been able to help recover AUD$4.1 worth of crypto from a Trezor One hardware wallet without the use of its seed phrase.
- ETH's 12-month gains now stand at just 85% after having risen to over 550% this past November.
After dipping to a relative low of AUD$3,000 (US$2,200) on 25 January, Ethereum has continued to follow in the footsteps of the market at large, showcasing solid gains in excess of 4%, rising to around the AUD$3,500 (US$2,500) mark only to showcase a slight correction afterwards. Despite the recovery, the altcoin's annual gains lay at 90% after having risen to over 550% late last year. At press time, ETH is trading at a price point of AUD$3,460.
The bounce-back comes despite the Federal Reserve announcing its intentions to set into motion its long-withstanding tapering plans — that will see a tangible hike in its existing interest rates — over the next month or so. In an effort to rebrand itself, the Ethereum Foundation also revealed on 24 January that it will no longer be using the ETH2 moniker that has been around since the upgrade was revealed a few years ago. On the matter, a spokesperson for the foundation noted:
"One major problem with the ETH2 branding is that it creates a broken mental model for new users of Ethereum. They intuitively think that ETH1 comes first and ETH2 comes after. Or that ETH1 ceases to exist once ETH2 exists. Neither of these is true. By removing ETH2 terminology, we save all future users from navigating this confusing mental model."
Youtube may be looking to add NFTs to its user interface
In a letter released recently by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, she revealed to the world that as part of her company's priorities for 2022, there could be a chance that the streaming platform could add a non-fungible token (NFT) option for its video creators. On the development, she noted that her team was looking to explore the Web 3.0 space — of which NFTs are a big part — adding:
"The past year in the world of crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and even decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) has highlighted a previously unimaginable opportunity to grow the connection between creators and their fans."
Youtube currently boasts of one of the world's largest communities of content creators. With the rise of Metaverse and Web 3.0, there is a chance that the company could continue to innovate in these directions to attract even more customers.
Are hardware wallets really unhackable?
In an interesting turn of events, a computer engineer was able to devise a novel means to access funds stored on a Trezor One hardware wallet (estimated to possess more than AUD$4.1 million worth of cryptos) without the use of its PIN code or seed keys. Explaining how he was able to carry out the entire scheme, Portland-based white-hat hacker Joe Grand noted that he used a number of novel avenues, including a RAM switch, injection attack and firmware update, to achieve his desired results.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing.
