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About Brave Cat
The barge itself never actually floated, by the way. That was just a myth. It sat on a fixed platform that created a mild rocking motion. That piece of Vegas engineering, like the statue’s original perch, is now history.
The barge functioned as an intimate stage graced by legendary performers, including Dionne Warwick, Blues Traveler, Matt Goss, and CeeLo Green. Its final performer was another Vegas icon rumored to be powered by hydraulics: Wayne Newton. His “Up Close & Personal” residency in 2019 was the lounge’s final act before the pandemic shut down the Strip for 90 days and closed Cleopatra’s Barge for good in March 2020.
The lounge enjoyed one last moment in the spotlight in 2022, however, when Adele—on the eve of the debut of her long-delayed residency at the Colosseum—tweeted a photo of herself goofing around nervously on its abandoned deck.
How to play Brave Cat
The web of lawsuits and court rulings involving prediction markets has greatly complicated the issue of jurisdiction. Kalshi has been forced to limit trading in multiple states, most notably Nevada, and the CFTC has gone to unprecedented lengths to protect its licencees. This includes suing nine states directly and issuing emergency orders to reject state mandates.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig is currently the lone sitting commissioner for an agency that traditionally features a bipartisan group of five. Selig has repeatedly defended both the legitimacy of prediction markets as financial assets and the role of the CFTC in overseeing them. The CFTC under his direction has embarked on a series of rule proposals regarding prediction markets, although detractors argue that the proposed changes still allow for sports contracts and in some ways could be seen as a tightening of the belt to make a Supreme Court review look more favourable.
“It’s not a question of whether innovations like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets will transform our markets. It’s a question of where this innovation will take place and who will write the rules,” Selig said during a meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee on 20 August, which featured the CEOs of Kalshi, Polymarket, DraftKings, CME Group and more.
What is Brave Cat?
Despite his experience launching businesses, Yashin has been surprised by the enthusiastic reception from the wider industry. Perhaps even more revealing is the feedback from the people tasked with selling the product. According to Yashin, one Swipe Games business development manager with more than 20 years’ industry experience told him he had never found a new product easier to pitch.
The response extends to potential customers. Yashin says that of around 50 leads generated through events and the company’s network, only one decided against integration, leaving Swipe Games prioritising a queue of prospective partners.
“We have a term within our team called ‘hot pie’,” Yashin says. “It is our internal term for a really hot product that is easy to sell. It is something new for the market and the market is ready.”
