This founder just listed his NFT company on a Toronto stock exchange with a valuation over $17 million. Here's why he thinks it's a good time for crypto firms to go public.

NFT Technologies, a firm that helps novice investors put their money in Web3 listed publicly on the NEO stock exchange in Toronto. It is one of the first companies to make such a move this year. The company is valued at about $21.8 million Canadian dollars. The value dropped to $17 million US dollars by the market close.

While most companies delay their public launches during market downturns, Mario Nawfal, NFT Technologies co-founder and CEO, said this could be the best time to list on a public exchange.

The company has more than enough capital and everything is cheap, according to Nawfal.

Nawfal hoped that listing publicly would help his company attract big money in traditional stock markets.

The founder of the Cyprus-based asset-management firm said that listing in a bear market could help firms focus on value creation as opposed to stock price.

The interest in NFTs peaked in January, but have collapsed in the past five months. The data from NonFungible suggests sales of NFTs have fallen since a peak in September.

According to Chainalysis, investors sent over $37 billion to NFT marketplaces in the first five months of 2022, putting them on track to beat the $40 billion sent over the past year. The number of unique buyers and sellers in the NFT marketplace has risen every quarter since the second quarter of 2020, according to Chainalysis.

Some people are not sure if this is a good time to list publicly.

The listing could present a challenge for our company. An NFT Technologies employee who spoke with Insider on condition of anonymity said that the listing may not shine as much as it would have a few months ago. He sees an uphill battle for the company since NFTs are still a novel asset with volatile peaks and troughs.

The market for NFTs is similar to the dot-com era for tech companies.

He said that a few will rise to be unicorns and really impact our lives positively.

The dot-com era had its share of failures, but the innovation it spurred has been unparalleled. He said that the same could be said for the technology.

Nawfal believed that the technology behind NFTs and other aspects of Web3 were at a turning point similar to Facebook in the early aughts.

He said that it will change society, but it is already changing society. The recent rebrand of Facebook is a good sign.

He said that if Ford changed their name to Ford Electric Cars, it would be a good indicator.