Have you ever owned a cat or known someone who has owned a cat? Also, have you ever owned a car or known someone who has owned a car? The answers are most probably ‘yes’.  But have you ever owned a cat costlier than a car or known someone who has? Yes, if you have heard of or played Crypto Kitties – a game played on blockchain platform where people can buy, breed and sell virtual cats using Ethereum currency (ETH).  

This might remind you of the Pokémon hysteria an year or so ago. But this time, it is real transaction.  

As per records, till December 2017, only a few days into its digital life, the game had already transacted $ 1.3 M real money for buying and selling digital kittens, with many being sold at 50 ETH, which amounts to around 23,000 USD and a genesis kitten – a special breed- was sold at a record 246 ETH, resulting in a transaction of 113,000 USD in real money.  

However, these are the auctioned amounts of some of the best cats in the town and an initial kitten from the site can be purchased with as low as 03 ETH or 12 USD. Not many people will agree to the term ‘low’ for a cat which you can’t even cuddle, but the truth is, like all other digital phenomena, it has spread like wildfire.  

The Technical Knowhow 

Let’s come to the technical side of it. Since it is played on blockchain, it is a decentralized platform and no central authority figure is controlling the game; which means you literally own the little kitties in the blockchain market like you own shares in the real one. It won’t go away with the company and will be yours on the Ethereum blockchain till you sell it off.  

How To Play? 

The game started with 100 kittens initially, called Founder Kitties which the gamers purchased with their ETH. Now new kittens can also be made available by breeding them. You can collaborate with another breeder for a certain amount, and if it is your deal, you keep the new kittens and the other person gets the ETH, and if you are the one approaching a deal, you keep the ETH and give away the kittens. 

Simple, right? 

Every 15 minutes, a new Gen 0 cat released at a price which is average of the last five kitties, plus fifty per cent. But this sale price keeps declining every 24 hours till someone buys the kitten. Similarly, people can put up their cats on auction with a base price and other gamers can purchase quoting their own.  

Created by AxiomZen, a Vancouver and San Francisco based design studio, Crypto kitties is the latest craze in the world of blockchain and cryptic currencies. If you are a layman here, it might sound pointless to you to acquire virtual currency and then spend that non-tangible asset to purchase and so called ‘nurture’ a virtual pet, but clearly, a lot of people will not agree with you.