600 ETH spent on CryptoKitties, possibility of money laundering with a digital cat

On 4th September, Mark Serrels, the Editorial director at CNET News released an article which claims that an anonymous individual had bought a cryptocurrency digital cat for $172,000. It is still unclear whether the cryptokitties digital cat was bought by accident or for the purpose of money laundering.

The name of the CryptoKitty is Dragon [896775] who has chestnut colored eyes and a “cotton candy” base color. According to her bio, she had “bit Rebecca Black once” and finds spying on neighbors “exhilarating”. On Tuesday, an anonymous individual bought the digital cat for $172,000 or 600 ETH [Ethereum].

The CryptoKitty is now owned by the user Rabono. The fascinating point is that Gen zero cats tend to be the most valuable whereas Dragon is a Gen seven digital cat. Thus, it reinstates the question whether the purchase was just an accident or a case of money laundering.

CryptoKitties are digital collectibles which are used for breeding and their value is determined based on how precious or unique the digital cat is, for example, a rare baseball card is very valuable. Since CryptoKitties are on the blockchain, Dragon is completely unique and cannot be replicated. Dragon selling for $172,000 is not normal because the average price paid for a CryptoKitty is $60 whereas the median price is $9.

The previous CryptoKitty sales have one thing in common, they are very old and are Gen zero digital cats. The second most amount of money paid for a CryptoKitty was $110,000 back in December 2017.

CryptoKitties can be bought with Ether which is a digital currency that powers the Ethereum network. Ether value fluctuates in the market just like any other cryptocurrency and individuals can convert their currency [e.g. USD, CAD, GBP] into Ether to pay for CryptoKitties on the Ethereum network. CryptoKitties can be accessed through digital wallets which include Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, or Trust.

qra_qqryq posted on Reddit,

“Maybe it is just CryptoKittens advertisement? Imagine lot of people that try to do something with CryptoKittens now in order to sell their virtual cats for a lot of Ether.”