A few days ago became known that an employee of the largest non-fungible token (NFT) platform was guilty of insider trading, or insider trading.
This would be Nate Chastain, head of product at Opensea. Users noted that he was able to purchase certain NFTs before they were available on OpenSea’s main page. Shortly afterwards, he sold these NFTs again for a profit. This caused alarm bells to ring with these users.
He would eventually have made about $67,000 profit from this insider trading.
How much #opensea product lead earned through insider trading. Data collected by our friend @BlockBeatsChina https://t.co/lJYOdQ8t0I pic.twitter.com/UQpRfj1LjR
— 8BTCnews (@btcinchina) September 15, 2021
The OpenSea team eventually confirmed these rumors. They argue that Chastain was indeed guilty of insider trading. As a result of this development, OpenSea has introduced some new policies. For example, employees are no longer allowed to use confidential information to trade NFTs or buy NFTs when they are promoted.
Chastain steps up
It was rumored that OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer asked Nate Chastain to step down as soon as possible. It seems that Chastain has indeed resigned by now.
On his Twitter account it can be seen that he his profile has changed and thereby indicates that he is no longer employed at OpenSea. Whether this was a direct result of the OpenSea CEO’s request is unknown.
There have long been suspicions that many rogue forms of trading existed within the world of NFTs. For example, an analyst from the research firm Nansen in August indicated that they had noticed certain strange signals. At the time, however, it was not immediately pointed with a finger.
Now for the first time the monkey actually comes out of the sleeve. There was very concrete talk of insider trading at the largest NFT platform in the world. What the consequences of this development will be for the rest of the NFT ecosystem, of course, remains to be seen.