Players can buy and sell virtual cats for as much as $10000 on the new cryptocurrency.
If you have not heard of CryptoKitties yet, it should not be long. These little virtual kittens are a real phenomenon of fashion breaking all over the world of blockchain and crypto-currencies.
CRYPTOKITTIES, what is it?
CriptoKitties is a game that was developed by the American-Canadian studio AxiomZen and was launched a few days ago (November 28, 2017) on the blockchain Ethereum. On this game, which is a cross between Tamagotchi and Pokémon, the user has to collect virtual chats. It has already generated millions of dollars at the time of writing and more than 15% of Ethereum network transactions are devoted to user exchanges, it's crazy !!!
The principle of the game is to breed digital kittens. Each cat is unique and has its own characteristics.
The user is 100% owner of his virtual creature, which can not be copied or destroyed.
It is possible to buy, exchange or sell CriptoKitties in the same way as a traditional collector's item or a cryptocurrency. The transactions are secure and the property is acquired for life (as decentralized on the blockchain), as if you stored an ether in your personal wallet.
Why CryptoKitties is the buzz?
If the cute and colorful universe of the CryptoKitties application is as buzzy, it's because it's one of the first fun and mainstream applications to be adapted to the Ethereum blockchain (and therefore crypto-currencies). As said before, each kitten is unique and can not be destroyed, so it will continue to exist even if the company bearing the project was to disappear. This is unusual since the digital contents of online games are usually stored on the publisher's servers and are therefore dependent on the publisher's servers. In the case of CryptoKitties, the price of these small balls of hair can reach stratospheric sums, even if they are only virtual elements ...
CryptoKitties can also be used by speculators as financial investments, this is one of the reasons that seems to have caused its dazzling rise. We know that each creature is unique in its characteristics, and it is this scarcity that attracts investors and collectors from around the world.
It is indeed not uncommon to see kittens trade for 10 ETH (or 4,600 dollars on December 5, 2017). The game has only been available for a few days but already 40000 cats have been sold and the record selling price of a CryptoKitty is $ 117,000. Users snatch these virtual cats blue, yellow, green or pink at very high prices while the game has just been released. So we can imagine that prices are not ready to go down as CryptoKitties continues to gain popularity.
CryptoKitties, how does it work?
The goal of the game is to collect kittens who each have their own attributes. The purchase and sale of these small creatures takes place in a marketplace from the Metamask virtual wallet. Users set a selling price and auction their kitten. The price of the latter drops until a buyer shows up. It is also possible to form pairs with kittens in order to make them reproduce and give birth to a unique CryptoKitty.