A look at Zed Run, a digital horse racing platform where users breed, race, and trade NFT horses, with some digital steeds and stables selling for six figures (Taylor Lorenz/New York Times)

A look at Zed Run, a digital horse racing platform where users breed, race, and trade NFT horses, with some digital steeds and stables selling for six figures — Horse racing meet NFT mania on Zed Run, a digital platform where some top steeds are fetching six-figure sums.

There is a lot of talk in the crypto world about digital horses

With Zed Run, a digital platform where some of the top steeds are fetching six-figure sums for their owners, horse racing meets NFT mania.

While the Kentucky Derby may be the most well-known stakes race taking place this weekend in the equestrian world, it is hardly the only one.

There are several of these events that take place every hour on Zed Run, a digital horse racing platform, seven days a week, every hour of the day. In exchange for prize money, owners pay modest entry fees to take their steeds to the track and compete against other horses.

These online races feature nonfungible tokens, meaning they can only exist as digital assets. They cannot be petted or fed carrots by hand. You can’t sip mint juleps while they sprint.

As opposed to the vast majority of NFTs, which are GIFs, images, and videos that can be collected or sold for profit, each digital horse is what Zed Run creators call a “breathing NFT.”

Virtually Human, the Australian studio that created Zed Run, describes a breathing NFT as having its own DNA. There is a bloodline to it, a life to it. NFT horses are bred in Zed Run’s “stud farm” and race, and have genes they pass on.

Crypto enthusiasts are rushing to purchase the digital horses, which appear on Zed Run’s website as limited-edition drops; some have sold for more than living horses. Digital racehorses were sold for $252,000 by one player. Another got $125,000 for a single horse. Platform users have sold more than 11,000 digital horses.

A Miami tech entrepreneur, Alex Taub, bought 48 of them. In most NFTs, you buy and sell them, which is how you make money. Your NFT can earn money by racing or breeding with Zed.”

He has a growing stable. For his 5-year-old daughter, he bred a digital horse. After school, she comes home and wants to race it. A horse named Gemstone gave birth to two babies called Rainbows and Sparkles.”

Horses are grouped based on their qualities and past performance in each race with a 12-horse limit. A random outcome is chosen from 10,000 by an algorithm.

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