VANEK SMITH: Did it feel weird to spend that amount of money on a cartoon picture of a cat?

And we asked him how much he paid for his favorite Kitty, Founder 32. WittyKitty owns more than 5,000 CryptoKitties. GARCIA: CryptoKitties made headlines earlier this year when one Kitty sold for $140,000 at an art auction. And you can trade them with other users or breed them to make new CryptoKitties. You buy them with Ethereum, a cryptocurrency. VANEK SMITH: For the uninitiated, CryptoKitties are these one-of-a-kind digital cats. We agreed not to use his real name because it would have outed him in the secretive CryptoKitty community. WITTYKITTY: Oh, it just puts a smile on my face every time I look at it.ĬARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: This is WittyKitty, as he's known in the CryptoKitty universe. VANEK SMITH: How does it feel to look at Founder 32? STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Are you looking at Founder 32 right now?

Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia, the hosts of NPR's daily economics podcast The Indicator, tell us about the thriving marketplace for adorable cartoon cats called CryptoKitties. A new fad in cryptocurrencies is making some people rich and leaving lots of others scratching their heads.

Free cryptokitties download