Why CryptoKitties Highlights the Future Success of Blockchain
Unless you were living under a rock over the course of the last week, you at some point probably came across the Ethereum sensation: CryptoKitties. In this short article, I'd like to discuss my experience and why I think it forecasts a bright future.
What is CryptoKitties?
CryptoKitties, at its core, is a peer-to-peer electronic kitten trading marketplace. Every 15 minutes, a new kitten is generated and availible for purchase from the marketplace. These kittens are given attributes and with attributes comes rarity. Kittens receive their value from three main sources:
- Rarity of attributes
- Breeding speed (the more you breed, the slower it gets)
- Network congestion (the slower people can list and breed cats, the less cats are available, basic supply and demand)
So, you basically buy cats, breed them (making more cats) and sell the cats to:
a) profit
b) buy more cats.
Sounds ridiculous, but its very quickly addicting.
1) My Experience $50 → $1000
I began a few days after the game launched. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I decided to put in $50 of Ethereum and buy a couple cats with quick breeding properties. Soon, I discovered:
Thus, I began looking for rarer cats and for underpriced cats. Since it was still very early, these were easy to come by.
My best cat was definitely:
This bad boy sold for $375.
Over the course of 6 days I made nearly $1000 breeding, buying, and selling cats. I sold my last cat yesterday and walked away. While the game was fun (and addicting), there are simply too many players, the network is too slow, and I don't quite have the time.
In fact, last time I checked there are almost 10 tools to track the value of your cats, etc.... so buying low, selling high is getting much harder.
2) My Dad Bought In
This was probably the coolest part of my CryptoKitty experience... I got my dad to jump into the world of blockchain. Best part, it was voluntary.
I had just told my dad that I was into this silly game called CryptoKitties and that one of my cats had sold for quite a lot of money. Following that conversation, I went with my mom to pick up a few things from the grocery store. When I came back, my dad had MetaMask all set up and had sent me an address to send him a couple cats to get started with. I can't say with certainty what inspired him to take the leap, but if we, as pioneers in this space, can replicate this experience... who knows what is possible?!?
3) Implications
The top three takeways from this experience:
It pays to be early -- this space, in general, is still incredibly young, so start learning and get involved NOW if you aren't yet
People are looking for places, ANY place to spend their crypto -- why would an electronic cat be worth $375????
New people are ready to jump in, they just need the right experience -- there is money to be made and millions, if not billions of potential future users, we just need an App to do it (and not another ICO)
Moral of the story, take a few minutes out of your day, today, tomorrow, next Thursday, and read an article, reread Satoshi's whitepaper, do something to learn, learn, learn! For now, I'm going to grab some food and get back to it. Cheers!