Rare Bits Raises US$6M Series A For Crypto Assets, Collectibles Marketplace

<figure>
<figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Rare Bits homepage</figcaption></figure>

San Francisco-based startup Rare Bits has raised US$6 million in a Series A funding spherical for its on-line market for distinctive crypto belongings and collectibles. The spherical was led by Spark Capital with participation from First Round Capital, Craft Ventures, SV Angel, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, Greenoaks MD Neil Mehta, Aditya Agarwal, Ruchi Sangvhi, Justin Kan and Avichal Garg.

The startup will use the capital injection to employees up and scale its efforts to develop the availability of crypto collectibles and uncommon crypto belongings in its market, Rare Bits co-founder Danny Lee informed CoinJournal.

Crypto belongings and crypto collectibles are non-fungible tokens operating on the Ethereum community which are provably distinctive and scarce. These blockchain-based digital gadgets rose to fame when Ethereum online game CryptoKitties went viral with digital kittens going for nicely over US$100,000. At some level, CryptoKitties grew to become the most important decentralized utility on the Ethereum protocol, accounting for greater than 13% of the community’s transactions. The craze peaked to the purpose that preliminary coin choices (ICOs) couldn't launch as a result of community congestions attributable to the sale and buying and selling of digital kittens on CryptoKitties.

CryptoKitties, a creation of Canadian venture-studio Axiom Zen, permits customers to purchase, promote and breed digital cats. The firm raised US$12 million from a roster of outstanding traders final month.

Since the launch of CryptoKitties in November 2017, a horde of comparable blockchain-based digital video games have launched to faucet into the mania. These embody CryptoCelebrities, CryptoPuppies, CryptoPets, Cryptobots and CryptoBunnies by China’s smartphone maker Xiaomi.

But for Lee, the crypto collectible phenomenon triggered final yr is unlikely to fade away, noting that the decentralized utility is at present being utilized by greater than 1,000 customers each day, producing eight,000 transactions at buying and selling volumes of 95 ETH or roughly US$48,000.

“That’s already a ton of traction,” Lee mentioned. “The crypto asset market in gaming is already sizable and continues to grow.”

Rare Bits, a web-based app that works in pair with Ethereum net browser extension MetaMask, was based earlier this yr to faucet into this thriving market and “become THE place to buy, sell and discover all crypto assets,” Lee mentioned. And whereas digital video games and pure collectibles are at present the beachhead class for crypto belongings, the startup believes there will probably be many several types of digital property to emerge within the close to future.

“Going forward, when there’s a lot more inventory spanning multiple categories (e.g. digital collectibles/art, software licenses, etc.), this can easily be 1000x bigger,” Lee mentioned.

“With many new platforms, we can expect to see many different use cases hit the market. Some might be shorter lived, like games, as they are more entertainment value driven. Others will definitely have longevity due to the practical utility these items provide.”