
In Defense of CryptoKitties - rchen8
https://medium.com/@rchen8/in-defense-of-cryptokitties-16dd2e447d9e
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CPLX
I see this kind of argument a lot. But it seems to always be missing a step
when it comes to theoretical crypto innovations.

All the examples of "toys" he mentions here are also _useful_. That seems to
be the fundamental concept of what grows.

Amazon was useful, you could buy rare books that were previously hard to find.

Ebay was useful, you could buy (and sell) niche collectibles that were
previously difficult to trade.

Facebook could show you pictures of classmates and let you communicate with
them.

Backrub (ie Google) could help you find information on the early poorly-
indexed world wide web.

And so on.

So how are cryptokitties useful?

~~~
kfarr
How are baseball cards useful? How about fine art? What about virtual goods in
MMORPGs? I guess my point is that enjoyment and fun is a worthy utility in and
of itself.

~~~
CPLX
Sure. Games and toys are a category of products and services.

The premise of this article however is that things that look like toys are
often actually not just toys, but "important" innovations.

To point out that there are toys that look like toys is less insightful.

~~~
djim
cryptokitties are digital assets that can live on any digital platform like a
mobile phone app as an AR filter or inside your favorite video game as a
character or a pet for your character. cryptokitties are digital assets that
people own. if that isn't important to you, you can't see the future.

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kfarr
Yes, good points all around. I hear similar criticisms of augmented and
virtual reality as being just "toys." IMHO being a "toy" that people actually
want to play with is not a bad thing at all, it's an important part of the r&d
and adoption lifecycle!

~~~
domevent
I’m not sure, but I think you just tried to compare the technological
platforms of VR/AR with virtual cat trading for money on existing platforms?
I’m not even getting into the huge amounts of time, money, and hard work
that’s gone into VR/AR, because as far as I can tell you just compared apples
and bricks.

~~~
djim
cryptokitties are unique, individually owned assets for digital platforms. how
are you going to play with VR/AR without the assets that are needed to make
that experience worth it? he just compared the apple tree and the apples.

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geraldbauer
Big fan of CryptoKitties and CryptoCollectibles. I collect my notes at the
Awesome CryptoKitties page [1] and also started a collection of (open source)
tools and public domain datasets at CryptoCopycats [2]. Have fun with the
blockchain. It's serious business. The future is meow :-). [1]:
[https://github.com/cryptocopycats/awesome-
cryptokitties](https://github.com/cryptocopycats/awesome-cryptokitties) [2]:
[https://github.com/cryptocopycats](https://github.com/cryptocopycats)

~~~
taheca
Did he just say Meow?

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pavlov
The sky-high exchange rate of ETH seems to be largely based on the assumption
that there will be a "Web 3.0" of Ethereum-based applications. Slim pickings
so far...

~~~
qedqfqef
I suspect their will be a decentralised 3.0 web allowing supporting the later
layers of the semantic web model.

I do not think it will be Ethereum, not just because of the technology issues
but also the philosophy, too much greed in the heart of it.

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paulgb
> What makes CryptoKitties valuable? Scarcity.

What exactly is scarce here? The picture of the Kittie is just an image,
right? Can't that be displayed anywhere by anyone?

~~~
AgentME
The scarce thing is being able to say "Cryptokitty #123 belongs to me". No one
else can say that, and everyone will agree that you're the answer to the
question "Who owns Cryptokitty #123?" or "Who owns the Cryptokitty with that
specific appearance?". It's definitely a bit silly, but I still feel there's
some neat allure to that. Maybe try thinking of it like owning the original
piece of some fine art. Art can be photocopied, so what's the point? There's
some kind of prestige in having the original, in knowing that you have a
direct relationship with where it came from, and the fact that your direct
relationship with it may affect others who are interested in the art.

And about the specific cat images themselves: sure, anyone can create a cat
image like these, but there's a certain fun in knowing that the image was
produced by a specific system and by people learning and using the rules of
the system. Anyone can take a chess board and its pieces and arrange the
pieces into a winning configuration, but that's missing the social
significance that you get from playing a game against someone and getting the
pieces into that winning position through artful play within the game's system
of rules.

