Former Lyft CFO Joins NFT Marketplace OpenSea, Plans IPO Instead Of Token

Brian Roberts, the former CFO of rideshare company Lyft Inc LYFT, has joined the world’s largest decentralized marketplace OpenSea.

What Happened: According to a report from Bloomberg, the new OpenSea CFO is already planning to take the company public by way of an initial public offering.

“I’ve seen a lot of P&Ls (profit and loss statements) but I’ve never seen a P&L like this,” commented Roberts.

“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.”  

OpenSea is built on the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain and is the leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace today. Recent reports have valued the company at $10 billion, despite having raised $100 million in its last investment round, bringing the company's valuation to $1.5 billion only four months ago.

According to Roberts, OpenSea is already profitable and doesn’t need to raise additional capital.

In April, the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc COIN went public in what industry watchers described as a “watershed moment” for the crypto industry.

With OpenSea’s trading volume already surpassing the $10 billion mark and the massive global interest in NFTs, an OpenSea IPO is likely to have a similar impact on market participants.

However, some members of the crypto community took issue with the fact that OpenSea had planned an IPO instead of issuing its own crypto token.

Imagine being the largest and most successful NFT marketplace yet choosing to go for IPO instead of issuing token.

NGMI.

— Arthur (@Arthur_0x) December 6, 2021

Sucks to hear @opensea is selling out and doing an IPO.

Their VCs didn't get them to where they are today. We did.

Just another reason why I can't wait for @Coinbase_NFT. If we are using corporate vehicles, we might as well use the one that won't go down three times a week.

— 2070 (@Punk_2070) December 6, 2021

Photo: Courtesy of Tomasz Frankowski on Unsplash