I just got my first Cryptokitties!
If you've been reading any crypto blogs lately, then you have surely read about the game CryptoKitties who managed to get Ethereum to reach its max capacity. As a person who loves both crypto and kittens, I obviously had to try to understand this, so I went ahead and sold 50 STEEM for just under 0.2 ETH to get started. This was around $100, and paid for my the insane SBD rate we get these days!
I had never tried anything that had to do with the Ethereum blockchain before, so everything was completely new to me. Luckily I found this introductory guide by @timcliff that helped me a long way to get started on purchasing my first kitten.
The humble beginning
I started out by buying two random kitties for just under 0.03 ETH each, and as you can see in the picture, swiftly mated them to get another kitten. I spent some time to learn more about the game, figuring the $100 should be used to play around with and getting to know the game, and bought a few more kitties.
And from there on out things got a little crazy
After buying a few more, I started to do some more breeding, and I just got my ninth kitten. I had originally intended to just have a few of them, but breeding them became a fun thing to try out, and now I have a few more cats than I had intended. I bet this is how people do it in real life as well, and end up with a house full of cats!
I ended up selling another 25 ish STEEM to get some extra ETH for gas, but I suppose I should stop before I end up with any more cats now.
Is this an investment or a game?
I see so many posts about people that made a lot of money from this game, but I personally don't really think it's easy to make any money of it unless they have a big increase in price. At this point the transaction cost for doing stuff in the game is very high, and since you need to pay a transaction fee for both buying, breeding, and selling the kitties, you will most likely end up with less money than you started with unless you get really lucky with the offspring.
If you got any kitties you want to price, check out this tool. There you can type in the ID of the cat, and get the average sell price for it. It's very handy if you want to check the value of your offspring.
All nine of my cats are very low valued, ranging around 0.03 ETH each. I should be able to make back most of my money if I sell them all, but what is the fun in that? I might as well keep on to them and see how popular this game is in a few months from now.
Thanks for reading!
I know most of you guys follow me for my biology or nature posts, but for once I wanted to write about something different! Have you bought any kitties yet?
Oh, and by the way: I still need to name my two newest kitties! Does anyone have any suggestions?
I suggest boggles as a name.
I'll have to admit this is one cryptocurrency that I do think, yep, them there's tulips!! Tulip tamigotchis! I think this is a fad and it will pass, but some people will continue to love the game. Kinda cute, but expensive cute!! Though I do wish the best with your computer full of cats - can we call you the crazy cat man now? :)
Thanks for the same suggestion! This kitty is now named Boggles.
I agree on your assessment; they are extremely fast and easy to breed, so the market will be flooded within a few days. I don't think most people are willing to spend several hundred dollars on the rares ones either.
Haha, I guess I am a crazy digital cat man now :P
Okay it's official!
Congrats! Don't get addicted to them like my friend! He is having a hard time selling the offspring of his kitties. He started with 3 cats and now he has 72...
Thanks for the warning! I bet it can be very easy to become addicted. It's pretty easy and cheap to breed cats, and I've grown pretty steadily since I bought my first few ones.
However, 72 is a lot! Is he not trying to sell them, or won't they sell?
I got my first kitty this weekend too, and am still trying to find out the detail. Thanks for the tips and site to evaluate the site.
You're welcome! Let me know if you got any questions, and I'll do my best to answer you :)
Is there a mobile version of this somewhere? So far I can only play it on desktop, which is not very easy for me.
I don't think so. You need the MetaMask add-on for your browser, and I don't think that will work on mobile.
Do you got any rare ones? I dived into it too. Took me some time to find CryptoKitties Cat Rarity Calculator. To get my transaction into the network I have to pay a hefty gas/ gas price. Never bother to used Etc much, thus my first impression was that Ethereum sucks. The game to get more valuable cats have some genetics involved, and I believe this could be a prototype for something bigger. For example decentralized science where users solve real scientific problems for rewards. I suspect we get loads of crypto puppies etc going forward. Steem is way better that Ethereum to handle this amount of transaction, thus very bullish Steem (or EOS/ BTS).
No, all nine of mine are common, and pretty much worthless :P I actually had the same experience with the Ethereum network, and I began to miss Steem after only a few transactions! Imagine how much better this game would run on the Steem blockchain!
I have not really dived into the genetics of the cryptokitties yet, but I definitely should when I get the chance. I actually have studied genetics for a few semesters, so I suppose I shouldn't shy away from the cryptokitty genetics!
I agree that this will lead the way to a lot of exciting projects in the future. There are already many different scientific projects where it's vital that people help out for anyone to get results, such as the projects on Zooniverse, and these would be perfect candidates for being rewarded with crypto ;) A bit off-topic from the kitties, but it got me thinking.
Exactly! Just imaging how the reward incentive in blockchain will drive humanity forward (such as your Zooniverse example).
It will absolutely be a bright future once that ball gets rolling ;)
Thanks so much for this handy guide - @timcliffe recommended it too me, good reco!
I went a little crypto crazy over these kitties too yesterday -I will check out the value guide for sure.
As to the investment question - Maybe you need gen 0s for that to be a possibilty? But $2K on a virtual pet seems a little steep!
Yeah, I think either low gens (0, 1 or even 2) could be great investments, as well as very rare trait combinations. However, it will all depend on the success of the game on a long-time scale. If no one plays it, even the rare pets will be mostly worthless.
If you buy a gen0 for $2k, then you are quite the gambler in my opinion!
I agree - $2 is too much. I'm feeling if my $200 ish was maybe a little silly. Although I wonder to what extent the prices are currently fuelled by early ethereum adopters - if you bought a few hundred ether a couple of years back, splurging 4 or 5 of them on a couple of kitties probably doesn't feel like yer paying out thousands!
That's a good point! I feel the same as you now a few days later; maybe spending $150 on digital kitties was not the best decision. At this point I think I will hold on to them for a good while and see how it all plays ago. I'd hate to sell them as miss out!
I going to hold some but I might try a little experiment with selling some at different times of day... might make a difference? I'm still counting them in my crypto portfolio if they don't sell
That shouldve said $2K btw !
There might be some price difference at different times of the day, but I'm not sure if they are big enough that you can cover the transaction fees of flipping them.
Hehe, yeah, I understood that :) A $2 cryptokitty would be extremely cheap!
Maybe not - I would like to say 'I won't be giving up my day job'- but truth is I am, although that's totally unrelated to all things Kitty.
Before I read this content I had no clue what crypto kitties were . But now I have a brief understanding how this works thanks for the content and keep educating our community
I'm glad you learned something about it! It's actually pretty cool, so you should check it out ;)
Thanks the way you explained it , I most definitely will ;)
:)
nice article
Thank you :)