Yes I know this channel is for coding, but just stick with me, ok? Good!
Crypto ones was a something that not many people have known about. Even fewer really used it. But now with steemit and stuff like cryptokitties or aethia more and more people get to like the idea. So lets go through the last two as steemit should be pretty familiar to you, because... well you use it right now.
Aethia( https://aethia.co/welcome/nnkgA8zQEe024zAWOjKzVTKvFbICugJI )
Athia is tamagoshi like project were you can get an egg for free(not for long so do it before it's to late), hatch it and take care of it. After you lost interest in doing that, you can just sell it for ethereum.
Cryptokitties(https://www.cryptokitties.co/sign-in)
Cryptokitties works similar only that you can't take care of them, you can only let them make love or sell them.
So as you can see there's really not much to say about these, so why does it have such a big impact on the userbase? The answer is pretty easy, you actaully see something of worth in something like an inventory, so they used one of the best tricks in programming, taking something that allready exists and making it better. With these animals people don't think that they just have a strange number, they have a cute digital animal that might even remind them of there past with furbys and tamagotchi and therefore makes them wanna buy one.
Conclusion
As a programmer you should try to take a look at popular apps and tools and think about how to make them better, then if you know how, you just do exactly that. I mean that also is what Elon Musk does when you think about it.
Refferal link for Aethia: https://aethia.co/welcome/nnkgA8zQEe024zAWOjKzVTKvFbICugJI