Did Opensea executive pull off $60 million crypto scam?

OpenSea, the best-known and (usually) most reliable platform for NFT (Non Fungible Tokens) tokens, is in the midst of a new scandal. According to various profiles on Reddit, a former employee is guilty of a crypto scam worth around $60 million.

NFT market place

OpenSea was conceived and founded in 2017 by the duo Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer. The Americans quickly managed to put the platform on the map and welcomed their first users in no time. A short time after launch, a massive $23 million was invested in the platform by venture capitalist investors, allowing OpenSea to continue to grow at a rapid pace.

OpenSea quickly grew into the best-known NFT marketplace in the world.

NFT Ethics revealed that the true identity of KOL Sisyphus, who has participated in various pump and dump projects, is Kevin Pawlak, the venture capital director of OpenSea, including AnubisDAO with $60 million Rugpull.

Former OpenSea product manager Nate Chastain was sentenced…

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) October 8, 2023

In 2021, also due to a song on the popular American program Saturday Night Live, the popularity of NFTs exploded and OpenSea did fabulous business, sometimes selling many million dollars worth of NFTs per day.

Ever since the crypto crisis of 2022, when the price of Bitcoin fell sharply and the prices of NFTs also plummeted, scandals surrounding NFT platforms have however piled up.

Front running

One of the most popular scams involved a staff member purchasing an NFT themselves and then presenting it directly on the platform’s homepage, thus influencing the price. The technique became known as Front Running and former OpenSea employee Nate Chastain was already accused of it in 2021.

OpenSea promised improvement but it has now happened again.

1/ Dear @OpenSea, what do you think of the fact that your Head of Ventures, Kevin Pawlak, has been involved in various very dubious business dealings (e.g. Anubis) and pump & dump schemes under his pseudonymous identity @0xSisyphus (& 0xMagellan)? pic.twitter.com/GzIVLJirLE

— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) October 6, 2023

The latest person to be accused of this technique is a former employee of OpenSea. According to the NFTEthics account, he ‘stole’ around $60 million in this way.

OpenSea responded very briefly to the allegation, saying:

“… is a former employee who left the company in June 2023. He had a limited scope while at OpenSea — where he worked in a non-management position. We have no awareness of his involvement with the projects in question.”

To be continued no doubt.