
CryptoKitties sales plummet in popularity - prostoalex
http://www.businessinsider.com/cryptokitties-blockchain-beanie-babies-transactions-plummet-2018-6?op=1
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john_moscow
I'm more wondering why would legit investors pour 12 mil into something that
it obviously a short-lived gimmick. There are plenty of similar examples that
perfectly illustrate how fast people get bored with something like this (e.g.
flappy bird, pokemon go, fidget spinners) and yet the round got successfully
closed [0]. I just don't understand what needs to be happening inside an
investor's head to put their own money into something like this.

[0]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cryptokitties#sectio...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cryptokitties#section-
funding-rounds)

~~~
coolspot
Greed.

Someone who bought cryptokitty early on sold it for 100x returns easily.

Everyone on the hype train was reselling kitties to next bigger fool.

~~~
Jdam
Isn’t that essentially what’s happening to Crypto in general?

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nikanj
I think the biggest scam in bitcoin is using the motte-and-bailey argument
that ”blockchains have real-world use”, and ”already existing bitcoins are
worth tens of thousands each”.

The only things you can do with already mined blockchain blocks are selling
them, or hoarding them. Their immutability is their biggest selling point,
after all.

~~~
coralreef
Are you certain you understand blockchains and cryptocurrencies?

Ex: _The only things you can do with already mined blockchain blocks are
selling them, or hoarding them._

You don't actually do anything with blocks. Blocks contain transaction data
for the network, confirmed by miners who play hash games for block rewards. I
think you mean the actual coins that come as block rewards, aka Satoshis /
Bitcoin.

Are you familiar with decentralization and developing apps on things like
Ethereum? Or IPFS?

~~~
JoeSmithson
Cryptocurrencies are really not that hard to understand. Without a doubt, they
are better understood on average among HN readers than among cryptocurrency
owners, and yet, it is the only subject where expressing doubt over it's worth
always gets you hit with _" Well maybe you're just not enlightened enough??"_

~~~
yorwba
> expressing doubt over it's worth always gets you hit with "Well maybe you're
> just not enlightened enough??"

I also doubt that blockchains contribute anything of value for most
applications that are currently being tried out, but I also felt that "selling
blockchain blocks" was an odd way to phrase it.

It's a bit like someone claiming that a perpetuum mobile is impossible because
"movement consumes energy and eventually it will run out". You can't tell
whether they have the correct idea about conservation of energy and momentum
or whether they actually believe that moving at a constant speed would
constantly require energy even without friction.

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jasonwen
What i understood of this 12M investment was that it invested in its team, not
CruyptoKitties, to explore this type of gamification using blockchains.

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baby
Interestingly, cryptokitties is behind the effort for standardizing the
concept of asset or non-fungible tokens (where tokens, here kitties, have
different prices). It's called ERC-721 (similar to RFCs) and it's quite
controversial: see [https://blog.citymayor.co/posts/why-the-standardization-
of-e...](https://blog.citymayor.co/posts/why-the-standardization-of-
erc-721-is-a-bad-idea/)

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Casseres
It's the Beanie Babies of cryptocurrency. Of course it's going to plummet in
popularity.

~~~
GrumpyNl
Better, the "Pet rock"

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vmlinuz
_pop_ goes the bubble!

~~~
omarchowdhury
That is an an underestimation of the technical, financial and social value of
distributed ledger technology if Cryptokitties sales is your bubble barometer.

Let's see what's going to happen to _finance_. The fiat-crypto infrastructure
that has been and is continuing to be laid out by multiple varied parties is
an indicator for the recurrence of another bull market, especially when the
current market cap is compared to the the cash, stocks and commodities that
are out there, each kind of which crypto assets are identical to.

The best thing we can hope for is the next bull run to be based on actual use,
working products that add benefit and value to market society. And who knows,
maybe it'll all even become _transformative_.

~~~
foepys
Please enlighten us: what are real-world applications of blockchain technology
that provide a benefit to anyone in any sector?

Please remember that there are over 7 billion people in the world that want to
potentially use it, so Bitcoin (or similar) are not working as a payment
system.

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garmaine
Bitcoin as a settlement system would work just fine at that scale.

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raverbashing
Bitcoin is every day making absolutely sure it scales less, costs more, is
more dependent on centralization and alienates more people.

It's not even funny. Go for ETH, BCH, Dash, or whatever, Bitcoin is proud to
continually shoot themselves in the foot.

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rdl
I assume most of the demand/volume was secretly subsidized by the company.

