Open Season at OpenSea
OpenSea is a hugely popular NFT marketplace. It is the site that most folks in crypto first think of when they want to buy or sell NFTs. When I first got involved with creating NFTs earlier this year, OpenSea is where I turned to put them up for sale. But this morning I received an email saying that my email address may have been compromised.
You are receiving this email because an employee of our email vendor, Customer.io, misused their access to Customer.io’s systems to download and share email addresses with an unauthorized third party. Impacted email addresses include those provided by OpenSea users and subscribers to our newsletter.
Not a pleasant email to wake up to. In all honesty, I've never been a big fan of OpenSea. I found their user experience poor from the get go but being the industry leader it was the place to market NFTs.
Please be extra cautious about email safety during this time.
Gee thanks! They also posted the issue on their Twitter feed.
Just last month an employee of OpenSea was named in a case over an NFT "insider trading scheme" in the first ever case of its kind. U.S. Attorney’s Office charged former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain with wire fraud and money laundering. That will make you question if the price you paid for that stupid animal NFT was right or not.
The largest online marketplace for the purchase and sale of NFTs seems to be struggling a bit after being valued at $13 billion at the start of the year with the NFT market in a frenzy. Their 2.5% cut of every sale was making the company a fortune as buyers lined up to spend huge amount of Ethereum on the JPG of their choice. Celebrities like Snoop Dogg jumped into the fray and the hype train was rolling.
Since then, NFT values have plummeted and the once sunny skies for OpenSea now seem quite cloudy. The bear market hasn't helped either and even the apes are feeling the pinch. Doesn't matter if you prefer the Bored Ape Yacht Club or the The Mutant Ape Yacht Club, both have seen their floor prices plummet as have most of the pricey digital artwork including Meebits, Doodles and Moonbirds.
What is potentially helping NFTs at this point is the drop in price of Ethereum of which many NFTs are priced in. Once priced over $4.8K, the second largest cryptocurrency is struggling to stay above $1,000 making many NFTs much more affordable then they where a few months ago.
I believe while the NFT fade is fading, NFTs will make a comeback as innovation and utility take over and silly artwork is no longer the drawing card. I hope that alternatives to OpenSea will push the industry forward and "digital ownership" will replace "digital artwork" as the key selling point. While I have helped create some NFTs, I have yet to purchase any but that will come to an end next week. I'll detail the reasons behind that in a future article but rest assured the purchase won't be made on OpenSea.