I must have been 10 years old when the Pokemon trading card blackmarket hit my primary school in England. At the time I wasn’t old enough to really comprehend money to any depth, money was just something I could exchange for sweets, anyway there was something that held much more value in my school then money and that was Pokemon cards. They gave you prestige, authority as well as popularity and were incredibly rare in a small UK village school. Pokemon cards were soon often used as friend tokens, “We’ll let you join our gang if you give us a Charizard”. Now and then a younger credulous rich kid would turn up with a pack of “shineys” but it wouldn’t be long until they were befriended, defrauded and sent home crying having lost all their cards to the “bigger boys”. The shortage but popularity of cards soon led to counterfeits a racket started with kids accessing mid 90s Japanese internet pages and downloading scans of new cards, printing, laminating and selling them in the school yard. These cards were more then just cards, we very rarely played with them, they were a currency in their own right, like cigarettes in a prison.

Some of you reading this will have limited knowledge of bitcoin whilst others will have quite an in depth grasp of the technology. To the former hearing things like “bitcoin is not a currency”, “currency is just the first application” etc may sound confusing as you often hear bitcoin talked about in terms of price and stability all arguably important traits of a successful currency. To the latter you may have heard promise and talk of other applications other then bitcoin as a currency but will have rarely seen these “other” applications put into practice.

I’d like to discuss one application that bitcoin is been used today, “Trading Cards”.

The Bitcoin blockchain, the shared ledger that stores all transactions has a few important characteristics,

1.) It is public, anybody can see and verify data on the blockchain

2.) It is immutable, once data has been written it cannot be changed

These two characteristics make Bitcoin a suitable choice for registering valuable/rare digital items.

Going back to my early life as a Pokemon card counterfeiter extraordinaire we can see the inherent problem with trading cards. Trading cards themselves are not important enough to have government regulation and strict law to help tackle counterfeits, but they are popular enough that it does cause a problem.

Spells of Genesis is the first blockchain based trading card game, meaning that all the cards in the game are registered on the Bitcoin blockchain, meaning one can instantly verify them as real (as well as not having to worry about storing them in airtight plastic pockets). The game is due for release in the next few months but users are already purchasing and trading the cards. Some of the rarer cards are even selling for around the $1000 mark.

A rare Satoshicard, $800 value

I was even fortunate enough to have a card created for my own character SaruTobi

SARUTOBICARD

As a holder of various Spells of Genesis cards it is nice to hold something that has value, uses bitcoin, but is not dependant on the bitcoin price, if the bitcoin price halved or doubled it technically would not change the price of the cards. Transferring owner ship of cards is also quick and easy and no different then sending a bitcoin transaction.

Another non currency use case of Bitcoin is in my iOS game SaruTobi, users can purchase SARUTOBITOKENs, which is a “token” registered on the Bitcoin blockchain, holders of these tokens can unlock certain in-game items. These tokens like Spells of Genesis trading cards can also be traded and cannot be counterfeited, this opens the door allowing game developers to create rare digital game items on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The cards and tokens themselves are actually registered on the Bitcoin blockchain using a Bitcoin 2.0 protocol called counterparty.io. Counterparty.io lets you create and issue your own tokens on the blockchain, this token could be your own coin, game item or trading card etc.

For any readers interested in getting started there is an iOS and Android app that helps you do that. IndieSquare Wallet is a counterparty enabled wallet that in addition to holding bitcoin lets you hold counterparty tokens such as Spells of Genesis cards, you can even buy and sell cards using the built in exchange. You can learn more and get the app here https://wallet.indiesquare.me/

I hope to see more uses of Bitcoin for non currency purposes in the future but currently trading cards and digital game items is a great place to start and an easy way for people to get involved in Bitcoin, use and merit from Bitcoin with our having to keep an eye on the price charts.