Opera Proposes Swapping Its Fiat Fling for a Massive CELO Marriage, Eyeing 27% of the Pie

Browser giant Opera is making a bold play to ditch its cash-for-services arrangement with the Celo network in favor of a massive 160 million CELO token dowry. Should token holders give their blessing, this would instantly anoint the publicly-traded firm as a whale-sized stakeholder in the payments protocol, proving that in crypto, sometimes you just have to put a ring on it.

The governance proposal, now sitting before Celo's community, seeks to replace a quarterly dollar drip with a three-year token avalanche. Given the current circulating supply of roughly 600 million CELO, Opera's 160 million token request is no small ask—it's about 27% of the liquid tokens and 16% of the hard-capped 1 billion total supply, a move that makes most venture capital rounds look like pocket change.

At press time, CELO is trading around $0.07, a sobering distance from its heady days above $6 in the 2021 mania. The deal would be a single, lump-sum transfer from the network's unreleased treasury to a Safe wallet under Opera's control, essentially swapping cold, hard cash for a bag that's seen better days, in a true degen "buy the dip" spirit.

To soothe any governance panic attacks, the voting power of this colossal stash would be artificially capped at 10% of the total staked CELO, with a clause allowing full power in a protocol emergency—because even whales need leashes, unless the house is on fire.

Opera and Celo claim this pivot underscores the rising importance of MiniPay, Opera's self-custodial crypto wallet built on Celo's rails. MiniPay functions as an Ethereum layer-2 for cheap payments, letting users shoot stablecoins via phone numbers and local rails in places like Argentina and Brazil, because sometimes you just need to send money, not solve a cryptographic puzzle.

“Given that MiniPay is already Celo's most-used app, our incentive to see the whole ecosystem moon is pretty clear and long-term,” remarked Jorgen Arnesen, EVP at Opera. He framed the deal as proof of Opera's “genuine belief in and commitment to the long-term value” of Celo, or in other words, they're going all-in and throwing away the receipt.

Since its debut in 2023, MiniPay has allegedly racked up over 14 million sign-ups and processed more than 420 million transactions across 66 countries—numbers that would make any legacy payment processor sweat. Furthermore, over 50 million Opera browser users sitting on reward points will soon be able to cash them out as USDT inside MiniPay, effectively turning loyalty points into degen fuel.

If the governance vote succeeds, Opera will officially evolve from a mere business partner into a long-term, skin-in-the-game ecosystem stakeholder. On a related note, Opera’s stock is currently trading at $14.6, down 1.2% on the day, because Wall Street still hasn't figured out how to price a giant bag of altcoins.