When I show you what I’m holding, some of you might see a simple cartoon.
看到我手里这个东西时，你们中有些人可能觉得这只是张简单的卡通画。
Some of you might see a complex piece of engineering. You’d both be right.
也有人会觉得里面涉及复杂的工程量。其实两种观点都对。
Meet Genesis, the first Crypto kitty.
有请我们的链养猫吉妮西丝。
She’s not alone. All of a sudden, crypto kitties are everywhere.
她并不是唯一一只链养猫，因为，一夜之间，链养猫就已经无处不在了。
“Crypto kitties” “Crypto kitties" “The viral block chain-based game that sparked a global craze for virtual cats.”
“链养猫” “链养猫” “区块链游戏在全球范围内掀起了一阵养虚拟猫的热潮。”
“It’s a picture of a cat. And apparently someone bought one for $100,000!”
“虽然这只是一张猫咪照片。但真的有人花十万美元买那只猫！”
You’ve probably heard of crypto currencies— but these are crypto collectibles.
大家可能已经听说过加密货币 - 但这些都是加密收藏品。
They’re like digital beanie babies or baseball cards.
它们就像数字公仔或数字棒球卡。
It sounds silly, but Crypto kitties is testing a profound idea: Can a digital good be… rare?
听起来可能有点愚蠢，但链养猫其实对一个深入人心的想法提出了疑问：数字产品也可以......独一无二吗？
Every 15 minutes, the company Axiom Zen releases a new crypto kitty that only one person can buy.
每隔15分钟，Axiom Zen公司就会发布一个只供购买一次的链养猫。
And they’ll do that until November 2018, when they’re capping these “Generation Zero" kitties at 50,000.
这一做法会一直持续到2018年11月，将这些“零代”小猫的数量限制在5万只。
But there are already more cryptokitties than that, because unlike baseball cards, you can breed them.
但现在链养猫已经不止这个数目了，因为与棒球卡不同，链养猫是可以繁殖的。
The game is that there are billions of different possible combinations of traits.
And so you can decide which combination of traits is interesting to you
and you can go out and try to find a cat that has that combination and buy it.
Or you can try and find a combination that no one's created before.
And through our breeding mechanics, you can come up with new combinations of traits
or if you're lucky, even new traits entirely.
幸运的话，你甚至能创造出全新特征的链养猫。
That’s Layne Lafrance and Dieter Shirley.
这是Layne Lafrance和Dieter Shirley。
They both helped found Cryptokitties in November 2017.
Cryptokitties网站就是他们二人于2017年11月创立的。
And they’ve convinced a loyal group of users to spend more than $23 million buying and breeding these digital cats.
他们还说服一批忠实的用户掏出了2300多万美元购买繁殖这些虚拟猫。
In just a few months, a whole community of third party sites and services formed around cryptokitties.
在短短几个月内，围绕链养猫的一整套第三方网站和服务也建立起来了。
You can do youngest first, cheapest first. See, like $10 bucks.
你可以从最小的，最便宜的开始养，嗯，比如这种10美元的。
And as I mouse over, this is a plug-in I found.
拖动鼠标的时候我还发现了一个插件。
We are trying to find new ways to play with these Kitties outside of the main game.
我们也在尝试做在主游戏之外与这些小猫玩耍的新方法。
So we’re starting with contests!
也就是说，我们是以比赛的形式开始这款游戏的！
Derpface is possibly one of my favorite kitties because he is just so unbelievably ugly.
Derpface可能是我最喜欢的链养猫之一，因为他长得实在是太挫了。
The traits that made Derpface the ugliest Cryptokitty —
让Derpface成为最丑陋的链养猫的特性
even though, I mean, I think he’s adorable— are baked into his code.
- 虽然，我的意思是，我觉得它挺可爱的 - 已经嵌入了它的代码里。
See, this is what Derpface and Genesis both really look like.
看，这才是Derpface和Genesis这两个链养猫的真实面貌。
The “genes” in their code define their physical appearance on 12 features, based on a template by a human designer.
根据人类设计师设计的模板，代码中的“基因”决定了他们外型上的12个特征。
They call those features…Cattributes are the visual attributes of the cat.
Like us, these cats can also carry traits in their code that only show up in their offspring.
像我们人类一样，这些猫的代码中也可以携带只会在其后代中才会表现出来的特征。
But the genetic algorithm that drives cryptokitty reproduction — that’s kept secret.
When the cats are breeding together, the secret sauce combines those elements to make with a certain amount of...
当猫在一起繁殖时，秘密配方就会将这些特征组合起来，形成一定量的……
well we can't really tell you much about that.
好吧，这方面恕我们不能透露太多。
But! They are combined.
但是，那些特征是会在繁殖过程中结合到一起的。
And people spend a lot of money on the chance to get their dream cat.
人们投入大把大把的银子，就是为了获得他们的梦中之猫。
Price depends on the generation number and on what traits are in high demand.
In other words, popular Cryptokitties earn high prices the way collectibles always have: Scarcity.
换句话说，广受欢迎的链养猫圈钱的方式和收藏品是一样的：物以稀为贵。
And what’s so interesting about this is that digital scarcity is brand new.
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