Key Points:
- Former OpenSea product manager on trial for alleged insider trading in NFT marketplace.
- Chastain accused of making unlawful gains of up to 5x original purchase price.
- OpenSea asks Chastain to resign in September 2021, while CEO defends him in court documents.
Nate Chastain, a former product manager for OpenSea, is awaiting the jury’s decision on whether or not to find him guilty of alleged trading fraud.
Their decision could severely impact the universe of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the standing of the important NFT marketplace, which started on Monday.
When Chastain was accused of making $50,000 in unauthorized gains in Manhattan in June of last year, he found himself in legal danger. US prosecutors claim that he purchased some NFTs, immediately put them on OpenSea’s website, and then sold them when their value increased.
Using covert accounts on OpenSea and anonymous digital currency wallets, he allegedly realized gains of two to five times the original purchase price.
On May 2, Chastain’s attorney, Daniel Filor, contended that the issue at hand wasn’t whether his client’s trades were dubious but rather if he had a cunning scheme to defraud OpenSea.
The attorney continued by saying that none of the trades violated any business policies.
Though OpenSea may have been a little slow to update its rules—it did so only after Chastain was accused—they weren’t afraid to fire him.
They requested that he leave the company in September 2021 because his transactions went against their “core values and principles.”
In the heat of the trial’s closing remarks on Monday, the prosecution’s Thomas Burnett charged Chastain with acting irrationally out of greed.
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