Quick Take:
- The non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea has called off plans for an IPO.
- The company’s new CFO was quoted last week telling Bloomberg an IPO could be an option.
- OpenSea announced the arrival of Brian Roberts as their first CFO on December 6.
The non-fungible marketplace, OpenSea has dismissed comments from its recently appointed CFO that it may consider an initial public offering. The company unveiled Brian Roberts as its first-ever CFO on Dec. 06, which later told Bloomberg that it would be unwise not to consider an initial public offering.
However, following a community backlash on the company’s social media handles, OpenSea has now walked back to those plans.
Roberts’ statement triggered social media protests from OpenSea’s NFT community, composed of mainly retail investors. A majority of OpenSea’s native community members transactions are below $10,000 and the call for an IPO was seen as an attempt at shifting focus to institutional investors.
One Twitter user Punk-2070, insinuating that venture capitalists had nothing to do with the success OpenSea has achieved so far wrote:
OpenSea is reportedly planning governance token airdrops that would give native community members voting rights in decision making similar to UniSwap.
Another Twitter user, Basedkarbon expressed the displeasure of OpenSea’s community support for failing to respond to requests as a clear indication that it does not care about the community.
Later, Roberts issued a statement dismissing the whole conversation about a public offering as a misunderstanding, tweeting:
Roberts became Lyfts first CFO in 2014, steering the company through the hypergrowth stage. But some eagle-eyed OpenSea community members may be worried by his other involvement in overseeing Lyft’s multi-billion IPO.
He also held important executive roles at Microsoft and Walmart before joining Lyft.
OpenSea is the pioneer and substantially the largest peer-to-peer NFT marketplace. As of October 2021, the platform accounted for more than $6.5 billion in NFT sales according to NFT crypto analytics platform DappRadar.
In reference, the non-fungible token market was estimated to have exceeded $15 billion in sales in October and is expected to surpass $17.7 billion by the end of the year.
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