⚓️ Cool Cats & acquisition rumors
what's going on with Fluf World x Cool Cats rumors?
gm.
who is Ken Cron?
no really…I’m asking.
the mysterious investor has loomed large over the Web3 world…but no more so than within the Cool Cats community (which you may have heard I have an affinity for).
he’s operated mostly as a silent partner to the Cool Cats brand and team thus far, but this week his name has been more prominent…as rumors swirl that Cool Cats *could* be getting acquired ⤵️
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ALPHA ⚓️
where do these Cool Cats acquisition rumors come from?
ever since Cool Cats let go of their first CEO in May of 2022, people on NFT Twitter have had a lot of fun speculating about the company’s future.
while the team has remained committed to building the brand on its own, it hasn’t stopped outsiders from urging them to sell, sell, sell.
famously, NFTNick of TheNifty.com proclaimed Yuga Labs was in talks to acquire Cool Cats in April of 2022.
(that was shot down quickly as a Cool Cat mod jumped into the Spaces and had Nick backtrack his claim immediately)
then, there were rumblings that Luca Netz was interested in acquiring Cool Cats…before he eventually opted to buy out Pudgy Penguins instead.
and this week, we’re at it again…thanks again to the aforementioned NFTNick.
*this* time his sources told him that Fluf World…not Yuga…would be acquiring the famous Blue Cat IP.
however, as a boy who cried wolf, his claims were largely dismissed…and it didn’t help that NFTNick deleted the tweet that contained this “breaking news”.
egg on his face again, he went on the record in his latest podcast and explained why he thought it was for real this time (see above).
around the 19-minute mark, you will hear him lay out the case of how and why Cool Cats is being acquired. he notes that by Fluf World he actually meant Futureverse… which is the company that controls that collection along with countless others.
and the mysterious Ken Cron? yes, he owns Futureverse…and plans on using his control of the Cool Cats board of directors to swoop up Blue Cat to *officially* be under his FutureVerse umbrella.
(allegedly, of course)
NFTNick claims he’s heard that Ken Cron has been trying to raise money on the premise that he *already* owns Cool Cats in meetings around town too. yet there hasn’t been much to corroborate his story...
…until this week.
BETA ⚓️
Ken. Cron.
this week, when…let’s call them a source…reached out to me saying Nick’s theory was all but confirmed, I was incredulous.
but when I then opened a link they sent me of an alleged Futureverse quarterly report …and saw ‘FV Cool Cats’ listed as a subsidiary, I finally had to take notice.
yes, maybe there actually *was* some credence to the rumors after all. for months people have been theorizing that Futureverse x Cool Cats were joining forces, and right there in Schedule 3 there was a smoking gun…FV Cool Cats listed as a subsidiary of Futureverse.
was it fake? an error? intrigued but completely out of my depth, I did what any amateur detective would do first…I punched ‘FV Cool Cats’ into Google.
the results gave me a whole lot of nothing, but a business listing from the state of Delaware did pop up matching the name:
it was created on 12/12/2022 (so pretty recently), but I was unable to get any additional info.
being able to pull no info was described to me by another source as “strange”. usually, *something* comes up, I was told.
this only caused my tin foil hat to grow taller. and since I had little actual information to go off of, I did what any amateur detective would do *second*…I started working on my crackpot theory on what the hell was going on here.
GAMMA ⚓️
FV Cool Cats must stand for Futureverse Cool Cats!
*warning I’m about to talk out of my butt* (I tend to do that)
so why, in the last 3 months, was there are need to form a new corporation/holding company established *separately* from the Cool Cats primary LLC?
(interestingly enough, the main Cool Cats LLC is held in Texas, and *that* one has company contacts aggregated (unlike the new Delaware one). one of those company contacts? it’s of course our boy Ken Cron!)
so here it goes: FV (aka Futureverse) Cool Cats must be different in some way from Cool Cats proper (duh). and of course, its biggest difference is that it’s potentially *not* under the control of the Cool Cats corporation.
instead, (from what I can tell) they slapped FV on the front of Cool Cats and *perhaps* created a division of Cool Cats that could be owned outright by Futureverse.
that way, Futureverse and Ken Cron could use the Blue Cat’s IP without friction. it would make some sense that in order to do this…they would first have to acquire some kind of “arm” of Cool Cats proper.
in November (right before the FV Cool Cats filling I might add), Cool Cats removed ‘NFT’ from their social media handles on both Instagram and Twitter.
could it be that the main team is now focused on building the “brand” of Cool Cats while FV Cool Cats is focused on the Web3/metaverse aspects of the business? and that each operates independently of one another now?
sounds like a kind of compromise, no?
just one man’s crazy ramblings…your theories are probably as good as mine, so please do join me in front of my big board full of red thread…
DELTA ⚓️
so what’s the takeaway?
I’m not going to lie to you: for the most part, my “investigation” mostly led to nothing but dead ends.
apparently, I’m not *nearly* connected enough in this space to get any real answers and not *nearly* smart enough to understand what’s going on from the business side of things.
as with most NFTs, this might be something (or it might be nothing).
that being said, what I do know is that there is a history of Cool Cats partnering with FutureVerse products.
for some reason in September of 2022, there was a (now-infamous) collab between the two brands revolving around The Next Legends boxing game. the creators of that Muhammad Ali boxing NFT? (see above) Altered State Machine and Non-Fungible Labs…a Futureverse subsidiary.
earlier in 2022, there was also a partnership to promote Seekers in the Cool Cats Discord that went hilariously awry. Seekers? you guessed it…a collection that is part of the Fluf World universe…a Futureverse NFT collection.
in both instances, these partnerships left the communities scratching their heads and asking, “why?” (including my friend Subvert who wrote about it for me in a guest post).
what’s clearer now is there were likely some controlling interests (*cough* Ken Cron *cough*) trying to push these two companies together. these connections don’t mean that FutureVerse has acquired Cool Cats by any means…but there is something to the claims that they’re in cahoots.
and ultimately, it makes sense.
why wouldn’t Futureverse want to use the Cool Cats for their metaverse future? Fluf World has been described as “creepy” while Cool Cats is typically described as “cute”. which do you think would be better for branding purposes?
and Cool Cats conversely needed some help with the business side of things in 2022 before the new CEO stepped in. did Ken Cron negotiate a deal for himself that would give him to have the ability to “own” part of the Cool Cats down the line?
though it was adding up in my head, truly after poking around for a few days, I left more confused than convinced.
is there a power struggle going on for the future of Cool Cats? is there some big plan we just aren’t aware of yet? hell if I know.
I regret to inform you that I have no clear answers to *any* of the questions I have asked today…especially the one asking who Ken Cron is.
tbf, I rarely do have the answers. see you Thursday.