NBA Superstar Steph Curry Is Now the First Celebrity CryptoKitty

Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry is getting his own CryptoKitty.

More precisely, Curry will be launching the first-ever celebrity-branded CryptoKitty, said Caty Tedman, head of partnerships for the startup behind the tokenized digital cats. The move is part of an effort to expand the collectibles app by adding branded tokens, which may extend beyond celebrities and include other popular icons.

"We are launching a series of Steph Curry CryptoKitties, so there will be three exclusive Steph Curry CryptoKitties [which] will be representative of his personalities," she told CoinDesk. "The first will be sold by him, and it'll be up to him whether he wants to sell the other two."

Moji, Curry's emoji app development company, approached the CryptoKitties team, Tedman said.

Working with him was "not an off-the-cuff idea," said co-founder Bryce Bladon. Curry "really cares about his fans and that's what we look for," he said.

But partnering with Curry means more than just adding a celebrity to the platform.

"Introducing CryptoKitties, and by extension blockchain technology to other audiences and showcasing crypto outside of currency, that's our primary motivation," Bladon said, adding:

"Part of why we’re doing is this very much in line with why we want CryptoKitties in the first place - we’ve got an actual opportunity to innovate and the past few months we’ve been hiring new talent and ... What makes it exciting is those moments, official endorsements and being partnered with something, to have an actual example of what that’ll look like on the blockchain."

"In a lot of ways CryptoKitties is a stepping stone into the space. It’s a great place to test IP in the space," Tedman told CoinDesk.

Bladon said he was looking forward to seeing how the launch goes, adding that the team behind the project is not done working on the platform.

That being said, launching the first branded kitty is "obviously very exciting."

"The cats have reached the moon," he added.

Stephen Curry image via Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley / Shutterstock