Satvik Sethi, former non-fungible token (NFT) product lead at Mastercard, resigned from the payment provider the day before yesterday. In a series of tweets, he explains why he came to this decision. He indicated that although it was not easy, he felt neglected by the company for a long time. He also wants to concentrate full time on web3 and making his own art.
I have resigned from @MasterCard.
For the past year, I served as the ‘NFT Product Lead.’ I evangelized Web3 for Mastercard leadership & regional teams, as well as all our Fortune 500 clients & partners.
This wasn’t easy but read on for why it was necessary, and what’s next 🧵: pic.twitter.com/kqiavsSIW7
— Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 2, 2023
Dismiss NFT
Sethi said the following regarding the neglect:
“At Mastercard, I was subject to harassment and emotional distress caused by a series of poorly managed processes, miscommunications and internal efficiency. There were months when I would not receive my salary until I begged for it from the hierarchy, among many other issues.
In response, he decided to mint his letter of resignation as an NFT, saying that 100% of the proceeds will go “to survival”. The project is called ”New Beginnings” and costs 0.023 ETH, which equates to about $38 at the current ethereum price. At the time of writing, 66 NFTs have been minted.
Sethi will now turn his full attention to his own web3 social networking and community building site called ‘Joincircle’. He also wrote that he plans to release various forms of art in the future.
“As you all know, I am extremely passionate about web3 and that passion originally led me to my current role in 2021. I have long been fascinated by web3’s potential to change the world for the better, and I believe now more than ever is the right time for me to fully immerse myself in this space – through my ventures, my art and my knowledge of the industry.”
Mastercard and NFTs
In June 2022, the payment processor announced that it was expanding its payment services to the web3 and NFT sector. For this it had entered into a partnership with various NFT marketplaces to make buying NFTs a lot easier. Users can buy an NFT directly with their credit card from Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox (SAND), Mintable, Spring, Nifty gateway and MoonPay.
In January 2022, it had already entered into a partnership with Coinbase for the same reason.