This article was published on March 16, 2018

This startup is building an eBay for digital assets like CryptoKitties


This startup is building an eBay for digital assets like CryptoKitties

While there are plenty of ecommerce platforms that offer the option to buy and sell standard goods and services, there haven’t been many aimed at creating a marketplace for crypto-assets.

Rare Bits, an ecommerce startup working with digital assets, is trying to cut ‘in’ this gap by creating a peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto-based assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) like Crypto Kitties and CryptoCelebrities.

The platform, which is currently in beta testing, allows users to discover and trade new crypto-assets. It also lets them monitor recent market trends and insights in a convenient way. Rare Bits also has its own wallet where users can manage all of their crypto-assets in one place, and buy and sell their Crypto Assets via auction.

Rare Bits compares its platform to popular services like Product Hunt, Pinterest, eBay – but specifically dedicated to crypto-assets.

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Although Rare Bits claims users can trade crypto-assets on its platform without any fees, it is worth pointing out that users are still responsible for the transaction fees involved in cases of network congestions and such.

The marketplace allows the users to buy a wide range of crypto-assets and NFTs, including popular options like Crypto Kitties, CryptoBots and ChainMonsters.

There has been a rising interest in crypto-assets over the past couple of months.

CryptoKitties, for instance, has sold more than $23 million worth of digital kittens so far. In fact, there has been a consistent boom in the number of DApps (including DGames) that have come up. DappRadar, which tracks the launch of new games and apps, has 227 such DApps listed on its website.

The marketplace also has the potential to spread a lot further given that NFTs are still in their early stage, and have so far mostly been utilized in the gaming sector. However, there are many other sectors such as art, music, luxury goods, where NFTs could prove quite useful.

Rare Bits was co-founded by David Pekar, Amitt Mahajan, Daniel Lee, and Payom Dousti. The quattro met at Zynga, shortly after the company acquired their startups. Pekar and Mahajan later sold another startup they co-founded to Google.

The team says that games are their beachhead category and where all their development is currently happening. They also expect to release more developer tools and services for publishers that help tokenize more and more assets in the near future.

The team says that they have sold 100 ETH worth of assets on their platform since last month when their platform went live. Given the rising interest in digital assets and the absence of competition till now in the digital assets trading space, Rare Bits has the potential to become a popular platform and grab the market in its nascent stage.

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