From Business Insider, June 16:
Top investors gambled $12 million on the blockchain equivalent of Beanie Babies. Now, sales are plummeting.
Previously:When investors gave $12 million to a startup called CryptoKitties in March, many raised their eyebrows at the news.
- In March, investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures gave a total of $12 million to CryptoKitties, a blockchain game for digital collectibles.
- According to data from blockchain analytics sites, the number of CryptoKitties transactions are a fraction of what they were in December.
- CryptoKitties cofounder Bryce Bladon says the livelihood of CryptoKitties can't simply be measured by the number of transactions that happen in a month, and that people's behaviors have changed as the price of processing a transaction has increased.
CryptoKitties, which describes its product as one of the world's first blockchain games, uses blockchain technology to collect and "breed" digital cats. Users can buy colorful, googly-eyed cats, some of which cost thousands of real-world dollars, to trade and "breed" more digital cat offspring.
It's a bit like blockchain-based Beanie Babies.
Like Beanie Babies, CryptoKitties are considered collectibles. Their novelty lies in the fact that owners can prove that they possess sole ownership of the Crypto Kitty they've purchased. In December, it was reported that one particular Crypto Kitty sold for around $155,000.
But it looks like CryptoKitties itself could be in danger of becoming a short-lived novelty.
According to data from blockchain analytics sites Bloxy and Diar, the number of CryptoKitties transactions has fallen drastically in the last 3 months.
The number of CryptoKitties transactions decreased in June by 98.4% compared to its peak of 80,500 transactions back in December 2017, according to data from Bloxy. The game is still among the most popular options for ethereum-related gaming, but public interest in buying and selling them seems to have waned significantly in recent months....MUCH MORE
April 14
This Might Be Important: "New technology could wean the battery world off cobalt"
I've mentioned our general policy on publishing battery breakthroughs: Don't.
There are so many announcements of this material or that manufacturing process or this chemistry or that theoretical approach that if we posted them there would be no room for CryptoKitties (below).
April 14
"How we made $100K trading CryptoKitties"
Not us, we're HODLers, this guy:...
March 22
Matt Levine's Meow Culpa—CryptoKitties, An Exegesis
Following up on Thursday's "Matt Levine Writes About CryptoKitties..."
FT Alphaville's Matthew Klein directs our attention to Mr. Levine's Friday Bloomberg View column....
March 22
Matt Levine Writes About CryptoKitties ("this column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners").
While we haven't heard Mr. Bloomberg explicitly state that he is in favor of CryptoKitties, it is difficult to see how he could argue with the comfort they bring as an antidote to the hurley-burley of daily life.*
Not to mention the "CryptoKitties as an asset class" angle....
*You can see the evolution of our thinking from November 2017's "Kittens On the Blockchain Is NOT the Future I Was Promised" to March 7's "The Blockchain Is Just Another Way To Make Art All About Money":
At least I'll always have my CryptoKitties. Besides being cute as can be, I was told:Through March 11's "Elaine Thinks About Signaling and Destroys My CryptoKitties Dreams":
CryptoKitties Sales Hit $12 Million, Could be Ethereum’s Killer App After All
Her piece was written a couple weeks ago i.e. at least two cryptocurrency price tumbles ago.
Think of a waveform, but not the smooth, soothing shape of a sinusoid. Rather think of a faux quasi-periodicity with just enough regularity to trigger a mirage of pattern recognition, just enough to suck you in, across the event horizon of speculation into the madness of Hunter S Thompson:...
"Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre—dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino. Big strike in Silver City. Beat the dealer and go home rich. Why not? I stopped at the Money Wheel and dropped a dollar on Thomas Jefferson—a $2 bill, the straight Freak ticket, thinking as always that some idle instinct bet might carry the whole thing off. But no. Just another two bucks down the tube. You bastards! No. Calm down. Learn to enjoy losing....
-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Excuse me, I have to take a moment
