It may be that CryptoKitties has some competition. CryptoCelebrities allows players to buy contracts of celebrities on the Ethereum blockchain.
CryptoKitties may have taken the crypto world by storm, enough so that the game was slowing down the Ethereum blockchain. However, the virtual kitties are facing a potent new rival – celebrities. The new CryptoCelebrities game allows people to buy up contracts of famous, and some not-so-famous, celebrities.
Blockchain Meets the Tabloids
The premise of CryptoCelebrities is pretty straightforward. Each celebrity has a sole contract that a player can purchase with Ethereum. If another player wants to collect that celebrity, then they’ll have to pay more for the contract, allowing the previous owner to enjoy a small profit.
The collecting game is based upon the Ethereum blockchain, and it can get pretty expensive. A celebrity contract that is worth up to 0.05 ETH can be purchased if another player spends double the current contract value. From 0.05 ETH to 0.5 ETH, the price to purchase a contract is 1.2 times the current value. From 0.5 ETH on up, the new contract price is 1.15 times the current contract value.
Let’s use Bruce Springsteen as an example. His contract will cost 0.97944 ETH to buy. If you buy it, another person can then snap it up for 1.126356 ETH. You will then get 0.146916 ETH in return. When looking at the current value of Ethereum ($997.90), this means that you’ll have to spend the equivalent of $977.38 to buy Springsteen’s contract, but you’ll earn $146.60 when somebody else buys it away from you.
Celebrity Craziness
As CryptoKitties has shown, people are quite willing to spend gobs of money on virtual goodies. While the mechanics of CryptoCelebrities ensure that prices will continually rise, the fact that the game uses celebrities from all walks of life could give it legs. People go crazy for celebrities. Just look at the success of the insipid Kardashians (they’re not in the game currently).
Then there’s the whole nature of the earning a profit when someone else buys a contract you’re holding in order to pique interest. One does wonder if the game will get any cease and desist letters for using the likeness of celebrities. It appears that the company behind the game is based in San Francisco, USA, and not in some country with notoriously lax intellectual property laws.
Celebrities can cash in on their contracts being bought. They’ll have to verity their association with the game, but then they’ll earn 3% of every sale. The celeb can either keep the money or donate it to charity.
Right now, the cheapest person on CryptoCelebrities is Håkan Hellström, a Swedish musician going for 0.40154 ETH. The most expensive celebrity is Vitalik Buterin, which is no surprise as he’s the co-founder of Ethereum. He goes for a hefty 20.16182 ETH. Rounding out the top five most expensive celebrities are: Angelina Jolie (13.47069 ETH), Donald Trump (13.47069 ETH), Satoshi Nakamoto (13.47069 ETH), and Emma Watson (7.35665 ETH).
To be honest, I don’t see this investment game getting massively popular due to the cost, but the public’s obsession with celebrities should not be discounted. The sky is almost the limit as the blockchain-based game will be adding new celebrities as time goes on. Even deceased celebrities can be part of the collecting action as the game already has Jack Benny and Ronnie Barker amongst the celebrity contracts.
What is your opinion on CryptoCelebrities? Will you be trying to snap up the contract of your favorite celeb? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of CryptoCelebrities, Wikimedia Commons, and Bitcoinist archives.