What is a BitKoi NFT and How Do They Taste?
Answering the Most Important Questions Surrounding the Hottest New Innovation in Fin-Tech.
About a week ago, I announced that some friends and I were launching BitKoi, a blockchain-based game for buying, breeding, and hatching digital fish. While there was a ton of excitement about the project, most of my friends, family, and other connections simply wondered what the hell a BitKoi is and why they would want one. Well, we’re back with some answers.
Our ‘soft launch’ on Thursday, Oct. 28th was a limited mint event of 200 rainbow (wildcard) eggs and sold out in under 2.5 minutes.
- We’re still updating our render pipeline and haven’t unlocked breeding — it’s very early still!
- The most expensive sale to date is around $860.
- You can get one as cheap as $65 (not including fees).
- See the collection on OpenSea.
- For updates, join our growing community on Discord
Q: What is a BitKoi?
A BitKoi is a digital fish that displays a unique combination of colors, fins, and other attributes.
Q: That’s cool. Can I eat them?
Well, no…
Q: What do they taste like?
BitKoi aren’t actual fish; they’re completely original creatures recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. When they are created (or “minted”), hatched, bought, or sold, these transactions are also recorded on the blockchain.
Q: Why would I buy an animal I can’t parade around my neighborhood in a baby bjorn?
Each BitKoi is wholly unique, and — since it’s recorded on the blockchain — un-replicable. Thus, like many online commodities, it can become extraordinarily valuable depending on the market. But it’s also a pet that lives forever, requires no upkeep, and will never embarrass you by aggressively mating with a throw pillow.
Q: I feel like these are Pokemon.
They’re not Pokemon.
Q: Where do you catch BitKoi?
BitKoi aren’t mined; they can be purchased, sold, or minted. If you’re buying or selling, you’ll visit a marketplace like OpenSea or Rarible. But if you want to breed or hatch your BitKoi, you’ll need to do that at our website, bitkoi.co.
Q: BitKoi is a game? Can I follow you on Twitch?
Uh, no. The game allows you to acquire or produce BitKoi that you like — based on the colors, fins, tails, special traits, or other attributes that you find appealing. In addition, there are limited releases where new BitKoi traits enter the blockchain. It encourages experimentation and discovery — there are over 5 million possible combinations of colors, fins, tails, and other traits.
Q: We learned about this in Freshman Bio. It has something to do with wrinkly peas and smooth peas and squares. Do peas smoosh?
Um, no. But this has nothing to do with peas. It’s likely that your new BitKoi will combine traits from both parents. But there’s also a chance that there are hidden traits that may appear in the next generation.
If you own an egg, you can hatch it or sell it. First-generation BitKoi mint from rainbow-colored eggs and have no parents; their traits are completely randomized. But if you own two BitKoi, you can make ’em smoosh, which will result in a newly-minted egg that contains a combination of traits from each parent.
Q: Cool cool cool. So, I’m really into defrauding currency exchanges through aggressive spamming. You don’t mind if I set up my rig to breed thousands of eggs per second, do you?
The game doesn’t work that way. Like humans, after they smoosh BitKoi require a ‘cooling off’ period before they can resume, uh, coupling. Also like humans, the older the fish, the longer the cooling off period. Moreover, BitKoi can’t breed with siblings or parents.
Q: Ha ha, that reminds me of this crazy story about me and my cousin! One time I was at a party at the Delt House, and I was making out with this person I thought was a total rando…
Please don’t finish this story….
Q: Wait, I just remembered half-listening to a podcast about NFTs while I was throwing water balloons off an overpass. Are BitKoi NFTs?
Yes! That’s a useful question!
Q: Awesome. So, I made $40,000 selling powdered Rhino horn, and my accountant says I need to clean…
That’s, uh, against the law…
Q: Oh, right! Hello, good sir. I am an art collector. I would like to purchase one of your fish-arts. How much moneys should I pay?
Well, it all depends on the market. BitKoi are bought using Ethereum, a cryptocurrency. Like I said, you can buy them on marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible. You can also purchase eggs in the game at market prices. It’s important to remember that transactions on the blockchain also include a gas fee to the network of computers that process the transactions.
Q: How much will this cost?
The price of each BitKoi depends on how rare its traits are and how much they’re selling for in NFT marketplaces.
One of the most confusing parts about interacting with blockchain games is understanding how transaction fees work. That’s why we’ve put together a live pricing page that estimates the costs associated with various transactions, based on the price of Ethereum.
Q: And why would I buy a BitKoi when there are so many other NFTs to choose from? For instance, I see that Wilmer Valderrama has posted a video of himself eating a cupcake at Walmart for $120,000.
Owning that video would be quite a flex. But BitKoi are a unique investment in that they can be used to generate more BitKoi you may either collect or sell. The game constantly evolves as new traits are discovered and bred. We also periodically release special edition eggs that introduce rare BitKoi into the blockchain.
And some commodities just exist to be enjoyed. We have plans to translate the BitKoi to a 3D environment where you can display and interact with your fish in a virtual pond you create.
Q: By interact, you mean smoosh with my fish, right?
Please go and buy the Wilmer Valderrama video.
