Express
First Ever Insider Trading Case with The Department of Justice Involves Ex-OpenSea Executive
Summary: Nate Chastain, a former Executive for OpenSea, has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with trading on confidential information. OpenSea, is “proud to be the first and largest marketplace for NFTs,” with over 600k users and 200 employees according to their website. Chastain is accused of anonymously purchasing "dozens of NFTs" ...
Nate Chastain, a former Executive for OpenSea, has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with trading on confidential information. OpenSea, is “proud to be the first and largest marketplace for NFTs,” with over 600k users and 200 employees according to their website. Chastain is accused of anonymously purchasing "dozens of NFTs" to then list on OpenSeas website, garnishing hype and inturn selling for multiples of what he originally paid.
Oxford Languages defines insider trading as, “the illegal practice of trading on the stock exchange to one's own advantage through having access to confidential information.” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement, "NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not."
It appears his former company is refusing to stand by him either. In a September blog post, OpenSea stated “one of our employees purchased items that they knew were set to display on our front page before they appeared there publicly,” and continued to say, “we are taking this very seriously and are conducting an immediate and thorough third party review.” Chastain was requested to resign a day before to blog was published, according to the same article.
The alarming fact is it appears OpeaSea was unaware of the issue until twitter user @OxZuwu posted “why does it appear @natechastain has a few secret wallets that appears to buy your front page drops before they are listed, then sells them shortly after the front-page-hype spike.” He posted this a day before Chastain’s resignation and two days before the aforementioned blog post. This Tweet attracted a lot of attention and was liked nearly 12,000 times.
Chastain was currently working on a new NFT project called Oval, until he was arrested this morning in New York City.
It is a good sign that the Department of Justice is moving towards fixing large corruption issues in the NFT space. Until now it has gone mostly unregulated and this appears to be a step in the right direction. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams agrees by saying, "today's charges demonstrate the commitment of this Office to stamping out insider trading – whether it occurs on the stock market or the blockchain.”
Author: Garrett Meifert
Tags: Cryptocrime,Department of Justice,NFT,OpenSea
Link: First Ever Insider Trading Case with The Department of Justice Involves Ex-OpenSea Executive [Copy]
