Gone are the days when people used to collect Beanie Babies and Pokemon cards. Today a new player has reached the market. They are 'the crypto kitties'. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary cute and adorable kitties. Yet people are spending a ridiculous amount of actual cash on these collectibles. For instance, the most expensive crypto kitties cost around $170,000.
So what exactly are these crypto kitties? CryptoKitties is a blockchain game that allows players to buy, adopt, trade and even breed these virtual cats. For a second let us ignore the damn cuteness of these kitties and ponder on the question of why would someone spend 1,000 dollars or more on these kitties?
The reason behind this is "digital scarcity". Before the internet age, if you had a thing, then only you could possess it, unless and until you decide to share it. With the advent of the internet age, this scarcity was gone. Every time, you share something on the net, you create a copy. When we share a music file or a word document with your friend, you actually send out a copy and thus you and your friend have an individual copy. Torrenting made digital assets infinite, and once an asset can be replicated and shared easily for free, its value plummets. But crypto kitties are challenging this scenario by experimenting with the new idea of making a digital good rare. The amount of these CryptoKitties is limited and each of these kitties can be owned by only one person. Thus a CryptoKitty represents a new kind of digital asset that cannot be replicated.
CryptoKitties are many things to many people. For some it is just a simple cartoon, for others, it is a piece of art, and for the rest, it is a complex piece of engineering. These cute kitties have captured the imagination of the many and it is revolutionizing the world we live in one kitty at a time
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