Crypto Diary 0004: Crypto Catastrophe
Fourth in a series of diary entries about the blockchain and cryptocurrency by Jess Lander.
Chicco Sadshmoops is a two-year-old, fluffy, lavender-colored kitten with green swirls and stripes on its coat like a psychedelic tabby — big, bug-like eyes, tongue sticking out, a mini-mohawk, and the spiky tail of a dragon.
This curious, yet undeniably cute creature was supposed to be my first NFT purchase. Chicco is a digital cat listed on the cryptocurrency game CryptoKitties, a platform where users can collect, breed, and trade one-of-a-kind virtual cats, sometimes paying more than $100,000 for one cat that they can’t even pet in real life.
CryptoKitties was one of the first blockchain games to really take off back in 2017. Some people play for the chance to sell their kitties for a big return on investment, but most, like me, are doing it just for fun. In a way, it’s bringing me back to the 90s and the days of raising Tamagotchis.
I expected this process to be fun and easy but buying a cryptocat was much more complicated and time-consuming than purchasing my first Bitcoin was. Heck, it was even more complicated and time-consuming than adopting my living, breathing cat.
The first hurdle I encountered when it came to using CryptoKitties was that even though I already have a cryptocurrency wallet, called Coinbase, to manage my crypto investments, I needed to install a new wallet, a browser extension called MetaMask to use CryptoKitties. Next, I had to figure out how to transfer some of my Ethereum (ETH) — the cryptocurrency used to purchase most NFTs, like CryptoKitties — from my Coinbase wallet to my new MetaMask wallet. This took some Googling, a little frustration, and more time than I’d like to admit.
When I finally got to the fun part (picking out my adorable digital pet), I fell down a sort of cat hole for about two hours. It turns out this game is a great way to kill time. Or waste it, depending on how you look at it.
There are literally thousands of kitties to peruse, and each has a unique combination of “cattributes” that lead to variations of color, eye and mouth shape, fur type and pattern, and tail. Some have peg legs or bat wings, others have unicorn horns or walrus tusks. You can buy holiday-themed cats or cats shaped like pickles. There are other things to consider too, when shopping, like each cat’s “cooldown period.” That’s the length of time a cat needs to rest in between breeding sessions, otherwise known as a refractory period (insert juvenile giggling).
I was looking for a cat that spoke to me, but at the same time, was cheap, because I’m still struggling to grasp why anyone would spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an inanimate pet. At long last, I landed on Chicco, priced at the equivalent of just $27.
Ready to commit, I clicked the “Buy with ETH” button. And that’s when I learned about gas fees.
Gas fees are used to cover the cost of powering each Ethereum transaction on the blockchain. The fees go to pay the miners who help make these transactions happen. Gas fees rise and fall with the crypto market but are typically small. However, as I was attempting to buy my kitty, fees were surging due to high demand on the Ethereum blockchain. I’m talking as high as $130 to complete a transaction, nearly five times the price of the actual cat!
I was faced with three choices: walk away from Chicco, despite all the time wasted, drop more money on Chicco than I did my real-life cat’s adoption fee, or offer up a much lower gas fee and see if a miner out there would take pity on me and process it. Not ready to fully give up, or give in, I chose option number three. So now, I patiently wait.