Bitcoin Forum

https://decrypt.co/87701/opensea-ipo-criticism-crypto-ethereum-token
OpenSea IPO Hints Prompt Criticism From Crypto Users Expecting a Token
"The leading NFT marketplace plans to go public, drawing backlash from collectors who want an OpenSea token drop instead.
OpenSea hired a new chief financial officer, Brian Roberts, who said he is working on the company’s upcoming IPO.
Some NFT collectors are upset over the news, believing that OpenSea should launch a token instead."

Did OpenSea do it right, or should the company have followed the Rarible route?

Of course this will happen, as so many people expect OpenSea to generate their own tokens, and airdrop to early adopters. If OpenSea prefers to hold an IPO it will be a disappointment to NFT collectors, and will probably lead to fewer users as well.

Lol! It's interesting to see how it pans out! Because as per my understanding, if Opensea goes public, then it will be the second company in the crypto history to go public after Coinbase. But the investors may be furious because they wanted a free NFT drop instead of investing in IPO. But that's ok because every company needs money to operate and stock market is one of the most reliable and time tested process to bring in that money.

I don't understand how Opensea could replace an IPO by a "free NFT drop" instead, could you explain what you mean precisely? I think they could conduct a classic ICO instead, but the tokens offered shouldn't be free otherwise the company won't be able to get funded.

I think if OpenSea would still go to an IPO then they would clearly become the largest platform for NFT. With the money raised they could expand to other blockchains and thus start earning even more.
However, while there are no precise laws for NFT I don't think that IPO can happen.

They must have considered both sides thoroughly and decided to go for an ipo, to me, this will give more exposure to opensea as a company and allow the public to buy into their shares, many people were expecting airdrop from opensea if they had launched a token, but the majority would have dump immediately they receive those airdrop, I think they made the right choice.

I have ambiguous feelings with this information, perhaps this will give more faith in the projects themselves that are located on this site, or maybe this is an attempt to get even more profit on this gold mine, then to sell the asset and leave with crazy money without bothering with the further fate of everything of what is sold there.

IPO is going to be big news for OpenSea community. Their platform will be a biggest hub store for NFTs if they maintain their growth.

IPO is another step to bring OpenSea to more investors, from traditional investors, crypto investors to normal people who are not involved too much in such markets.

IPO will be a free marketing for OpenSea and their platform will attract more people to join after that.

Of course it will be very interesting to see what happens, with this they will openly make Opensea a big NFT market and indirectly this will provide more exposure from investors.
But in this case I still have doubts with NFT which will indeed hinder the IPO itself

The company will already have a lot of coins left after distributing airdrop to its users, which can be used for financing. It is possible that this amount could be more than what they will receive from the IPO. But in any case, ordinary OpenSea users will be unhappy with the upcoming IPO, as they will be deprived of a ghostly hope for airdrop.

Yeah, I have heard the rumours of a possible airdrop from opensea but now that they opted for ipo the hope of getting free tokens have dashed, maybe they don't want their tokens to be dumped cheaply plus the market situation is not very encouraging to launch a project, nobody knows what the direction of the market will be.

haven't you heard of governance tokens getting airdroped for active users of different platforms already ?? for example uniswap, 1inch, dydx, paraswap and many more, and of course from the total supply the team behind those platforms have a percentage, they also get a percentage of the token, just like the people who get an airdrop.

But the timing though, how can they bring money when investors are reluctant to pour their hard earn money in crypto?

So let's see, the hype though is still in the air for NFT and so is Opensea, but come 2022, it might have a different tune as we all know that in a blink of an eye everything can change here in crypto. And as far as Coinbase goes, yes, it's every successful in about 2 days and then the price goes down.

Open Sea denied rumors of an IPO. The new CFO of OpenSea, Brian Roberts, stated that the company does not plan to enter an IPO (initial public offering on the stock market) after a negative reaction from the community. After criticism and rumors about the IPO, Roberts wrote that if such plans appear, the company will involve the community in the discussion.

Who the heck would buy into it?

Opensea seems like one of the great innovators but their product can be replaced in a heartbeat by other competitors such as Binance NFT. There is simply way too much competition and the margins will just get lower and lower.

Plus, this would go against the totality of their agenda of decentralization and democratization. It's crazy to me.

VCs who would then fan out to the whole NFT ecosystem and corporatize it. The fact that NFTs are in general a big boys' club ensures that a closed group of people can exploit it. There is a lot of money to be made by founders of Opensea by siding with the corporates rather than the "community" and simply be sell-outs and have a potential monopoly. That is what they probably hope.

A non-controversial reason may just be that they want to follow the accepted, established processes and just become your average corporation that provides a service and has zero stake in being true to the ethos of decentralization, if it means anything anmore.

Hopefully not Binance NFTs but something actually decentralized or maybe just an aggregator of multiple open exchanges. Something like the Uniswap of NFTs.

Also, why they need so much funds from IPO, and what will they do with the funds? It's some generic question they have to answer. I doubt this news is true, but if it's true, then let's look at their prospectus. Maybe they want to ride the wave while it last, do IPO when NFT is still booming. It smells like the dot-com bubble!

It is possible that OpenSea thought that distributing free tokens (Airdrop) would dump the price of the token because those who get it will immediately sell it at any price, but I think they could have done instead like Uniswap did, where They reward users who have used the platform at least once, or they can reward the most active users.
Usually, Airdrop is made to get more users but perhaps OpenSea feels it already has a lot of users so they decided to go public instead.