Cryptokitties.

It reads a little bit like the beginning of a riddle: what has no utilitarian value, produces nothing, has a value entirely dependent on artificial scarcity and is worth US$117,000?

You would be forgiven for not knowing the answer (or for thinking that 117k is a lot to pay for Donald Trump). No, the answer is: Cryptokitties. The progeny of gaming and blockchain in which users spend real money (real fiat money) to buy, sell, and breed cartoon kittens using the ethereum platform. So far, the top-selling pussy fetched around 247 ethereums, worth US$117,712 at the time.

CryptoKitties can be bred together, taking into account some genetics from the previous breed – specific breeding has the chance to create a ‘fancy cat’. ‘Fancy cats’ are based on real people and are extremely rare. For example, there is one named after Elon Musk with the name ‘Feline Musk’.

This is in the same week that bitcoin has for the first time passed Donald Trump in Google search requests (according to the site’s analytics division and relayed by Business Insider and Grant’s Interest Rate Observer).

A quick refresh on what is the most entertaining, perplexing, lucrative and, without-doubt, perilous force to hit the financial realm in recent memory. Bitcoin, which could be swapped for about US$963 per slither of computer code on Jan. 1, changed hands at around US$11,629 in mid-afternoon today, good for a 944% return year-to-date. Over a five year period, its price has increased by approximately 85,000%. Give or take.