Banksy’s Wharf Rat was discovered for the first time in 2010 on San Francisco’s Pier 39 on Fisherman’s Wharf. The art piece features a rat digging its way out of the tunnel, painted on a metal door, right next to the Alcatraz Boat Tour station. However, the City of San Francisco Department of Public Works painted over the door, and everyone thought the street art had been destroyed.

It has been 11 years since everyone thought Banksy’s Wharf Rat masterpiece was lost or destroyed, until today. The art piece has been found by a Banksy fan and was sent to specialized restoration facilities, according to the official website of the NFT team who’s listing this art piece.

Under the observation of a  professional within the American Society of Appraisal, Banksy’s Wharf Rat is worth more than $700,000.

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Brian Mittendorf, Fisher Designated Professor of Accounting, The Ohio State University, and Sean Stein Smith, Assistant Professor of Economics and Business, Lehman College, CUNY.

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The eye-popping sale price of USD 69m on March 11, 2021, for a non-fungible token (NFT) created by the digital artist Beeple sent shock waves through the art world. More multimillion-dollar sales of these digital assets that exist on a blockchain and are maintained on networked computers soon followed.

At the same time, art museums have faced substantial financial shortfalls accelerated by a decline in visitors and donations induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have considered taking drastic measures, such as selling treasured artworks, to plug budget gaps.

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) offers one of the most widely applicable use-cases for distributed ledger technology and today it is one of the main avenues for the wider adoption of blockchain technology.

Last week, as the wider crypto market corrected and Bitcoin (BTC) dropped by 22%, DeFiChain (DFI) bucked the trend and rallied 76% to establish a new high at $5.70 on Dec. 6 as its 24-hour trading volume surged from an average of $3.6 million to $24.3 million.


DFI/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Three reasons for the price breakout for DFI include the launch of decentralized assets on the DFI mainnet, a surge in transactions and users on the network and an increase in the total value locked on the protocol.

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DeFi or the decentralized finance industry has the potential to disrupt mainstream banks, as per experts. But the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) have deemed that the industry has a centralization issue and lawmakers should use that to regulate the sector. In a recent published quarterly review the bank highlighted the first of its five special features to discuss the decentralized and implications for financial stability. According to the report, the decentralized industry seeks to enhance the efficiency of financial transactions with automated contracts developed on blockchains. Notably, BIS revealed that there is a way from which lawmakers can enter in the industry.

DeFi requires centralized governance
According to the report of BIS, the DeFi industry has an unpreventable requirement for a centralized governance. According to Hyon Song Shin, BIS’ head of research, there is a limit to how far someone can run an entire financial system that is based on automated transactions. Hence, there would be events where the decentralized projects would need reorganization or judgment.

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LaCucina, a DeFi engagement layer platform, is preparing to launch on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). They will be the pioneering team on the blockchain to offer the general public a way to get more excited about DeFi.

With its state-of-the-art, engagement-enhancing program, LaCucina will open the doors to different opportunities for users who use selected decentralized exchanges (DEX). As part of the launch, the platform will offer perks to users who give liquidity to select liquidity pools on SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, and Uniswap in the summer of 2021.

In addition, users do not need to pull their tokens out of the DEXs or make additional staking to claim their rewards. With LaCucina’s Cooking Plans, small users can punch above their weight with timely and committed engagement.

The majority of farms and DEXs offer profitable opportunities that give high-percentage yields, but they are designed in favor of crypto whales. This means the rich will get richer, while those holding less will see slow-paced growth.

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El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption caused a big stir in the world. It was almost a myth until the coin was signed into law as a means of payment. Then, the simple announcement alone shook the world, and the final launch became a hot topic.

To say that many people and organizations came for Nayib is an understatement. The country’s president received many insults, but he kept pushing until he achieved the goal.

Amongst the ones who voiced their concerns loudly is the Bank of England (BOE). Ignoring the praiseworthy things about blockchain, such as the technology’s stealthy security, the Bank of England has been skeptical about the whole idea of bitcoin, its growth, or its popularity. So, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele worsened its negative position. Andrew Bailey of BOE, a BTC critic, appears to be more vocal than others.

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The decentralized Loopring exchange is one of several layer two (L2) networks that have seen a surge in adoption as Ethereum transaction fees march ever higher.

Loopring is a layer two DEX that uses zero-knowledge rollups to scale Ethereum transactions. With gas prices at painful levels, it has seen a surge in usage over the past few months. Loopring claims to be able to settle up to 2,025 trades per second with an average transaction cost of 0.15-0.30% of that on Ethereum L1.

Chinese media outlet Wu Blockchain has observed the big uptick in Loopring adoption, commenting:

The cumulative trading volume recently exceeded $3 billion. The price of LRC has risen 10x the highest since October.

Citing a chart from Delphi Digital, Wu added that trading activities and volumes on the DEX have surged since October.

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Chinese cybersecurity giant Qihoo 360 said in a WeChat post on Tuesday that it has built a system to monitor crypto mining operations, which will assist the government’s crackdown on the industry.

The monitoring system is aimed at government agencies and companies that want to comply with China’s latest crackdown on crypto mining. The software can provide miners’ IP address, geographical location, network type, connection frequency, and suggest methods of how to dispose of them, Qihoo 360 said.
Last week, Chinese users could not connect to some of the world’s largest mining pools due to DNS poisoning. This type of attack means that the pool’s domain names (eg. CoinDesk.com) were directed away from their actual IP addresses, where their servers are.
Qihoo 360 found that 109,000 mining IP addresses were active daily on average in November, mostly in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shandong, the company said. Miners mainly use home broadband, enterprise-dedicated internet connections, and data centers, Qihoo 360 said.
The software uses the company’s proprietary network traffic monitoring capabilities, big data analysis, and active defense mechanisms.

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