Crypto kitties are the new craze which has taken over the cryptocurrency universe. Built off the Ethereum platform, cryptokitties launched only weeks ago, but is now responsible for 11% of all daily Ethereum transactions. Recently, the genesis kitty which started it all sold for 250 ETH, or roughly $113,000.
For those of you that don't know, cryptokitties is a Dapp, an app built using Solidity, which is Ethereum's programming language. Cryptokitties can be bought and sold at a marketplace, some of them being rare due to having different colors and attributes. Those cats can then be bred to make more cats. The original, genesis cat recently sold for 250 ETH. Call the buyer crazy, but they have certainly cemented themselves in another piece of Crypto history.
The hype around cryptokitties is not necesarily due to the game, but due to the implications that it has. One heavily used app can cause Ethereum to become massively adopted, and also showed how much strain it can have on the Ethereum system. The idea is also that kitties aren't being traded on the platform, rather the idea that perhaps stocks, real estate, or other physical items could be traded and auctioned in much the same way that these digital cats are.
Sources:
http://www.kittyexplorer.com/
Ethereum.org
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