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New OpenSea chief financial officer Brian Roberts has clarified that the company is not actively planning for an initial public offering, days after his comments riled the OpenSea NFT community.
Fast facts
- In a tweet on Wednesday, Roberts wrote: “There was inaccurate reporting about @OpenSea’s plans. Let me set the record straight: there is a big gap between thinking about what an IPO might eventually look like & actively planning one.” He added the firm is not planning an IPO, but if it ever did, it would look to involve the community.
- In an interview on Monday, Roberts had told Bloomberg: “When you have a company growing as fast as this one, you’d be foolish not to think about it going public.” He had added that the IPO would be positively received by the public market owing to its fast growth and profitability.
- Roberts’ comments irked users who were hoping for an airdrop. The community that helped OpenSea grow felt abandoned by talk of an IPO. Some took to Twitter to criticize OpenSea’s decision to hire Roberts, who previously worked in companies including Lyft, Microsoft and Walmart but does not have a background in blockchain or Web 3.0. Some even talked about replacing OpenSea with a more “community minded” and “decentralized” platform.” One Twitter user wrote: “a community exit to alternate platform will give a super strong message to the market and all teams.”
- OpenSea is the world’s largest non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, offering over 80 million NFTs to over 750,000 users. OpenSea’s trading volume since its inception in 2017 crossed US$10 billion last month. Though OpenSea is dominating the market, users looking to switch to decentralized platforms may flock to rivals like Mintable, which is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization.