First CFO at OpenSea
According to Bloomberg, Roberts said that the growth of Web3, and particularly the NFT marketplace, made it easier to join the company. The new OpenSea CFO said:
“I haven’t been this excited about something in a very long time. It reminds me of 1995 eBay.”
Roberts was the former CFO of the San Francisco-based ride-hailing company, Lyft. The tech veteran occupied his position at Lyft for seven years before stepping down and was instrumental in the success of the company’s IPO back in 2019. While Elaine Paul has been chosen as his successor, the new OpenSea CFO will remain as an advisor on Lyft until June 2022.
It seems Roberts wants to bring his expertise to OpenSea, stating that with the exponential growth of the popular NFT marketplace, it was not out of place to consider taking the platform public. In the CFO’s words:
“When you have a company growing as fast as this one, you’d be foolish not to think about it going public. It would be well-received in the public market given its growth.”
Roberts also added that while OpenSea’s books were in the black and did not need additional funding to keep the platform afloat, the executive said that funding could be used to form partnerships, joint ventures, and also broaden NFT’s use.
OpenSea Receives Backlash About Proposed IPO
However, the new CFO’s statement about taking OpenSea public did not seem to go down well with most members of the community.Many commenters on Crypto Twitter hoped that the NFT marketplace will do token airdrops for its users instead.
Others said that going the IPO route was not the hallmark of decentralization. Following the anger and disappointment of the community, Roberts in a tweet on Wednesday (Dec. 8, 2021), said that his statement was misunderstood. According to a statement by the OpenSea executive:
“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. We are not planning an IPO, and if we ever did, we would look to involve the community.”
OpenSea’s has seen massive growth, thanks to the increasing popularity of NFTs. The sector has seen adoption from musicians, sports clubs, companies, athletes, among others. Back in August, the company’s trading volume hit the $1 billion mark for the first time.
Later in November, the trading volume did a 10x, reaching over $10 billion in three months. The figure is astounding, considering that the NFT marketplace recorded a volume of $21 million for the whole of 2020.
Meanwhile, everything has not been rosy for OpenSea, as one of its executives at the time, Nate Chastain, was alleged to be involved in insider trading. Chastain served as the company’s head of product before quitting the position and the firm.
