Crypto-collectibles auction site, Rare Bits, raises $6 million

Will use the funds to continue to flesh out the eBay-style crypto marketplace

Ok, so there are a lot of new uses being realized for cryptocurrency. From real estate to retirement, creative entrepreneurs are finding practical uses for the blockchain and tokenization. These same people are also finding fun ways to implement the budding technology into services.

Take, for example, CryptoKitties, a collectible trading game built on the Ethereum blockchain. While the concept of CryptoKitties is novel and very simple, it touches on what could be with blockchain based crypto assets, especially for gaming. With these new blockchain gaming assets comes a need for places that users can look to for unique items for their use or a centralized place to gauge market interest if they are looking to sell.

Rare Bits is hoping to capitalize on this emerging market by offering an eBay-style marketplace for users to buy, sell, and trade their Ethereum-based gaming assets with other gamers. To help solidify the need for this type of marketplace, Rare Bits has just announced they have closed on a funding round totaling $6 million.

The funding round was led by Nabeel Hyatt at Spark Capital, with additional participation by First Round Capital, David Sacks’ Craft Ventures, and SVAngel.

The platform currently has over 500,000 listings for games like CryptoKitties, CryptoCelebrities, Mythereum, and Ether Tulips. At present, there are no fees for listing or purchasing on the platform, but time will tell if that remains. That being said, if a game developer has any secondary sale fees, those fees will be split with Rare Bits. 

“Because of the Ethereum ledger, for the first time, users can truly own their digital items,” says co-founder Amitt Mahajan. “Previously in mobile or social games, virtual items earned through play or by spending money were actually owned by the company operating the game. If they shut down their servers, the items would go away and users would be out of luck. We believe this new asset class represents a paradigm shift in digital property whereby centralized assets will be moved onto decentralized systems”