OpenSea investor cuts platform stake by 90%: Report
US technology investment firm Coatue Management has cut its share price in OpenSea by 90%.
In the year On Nov. 7, a document it reviewed showed that Coatu had reduced its investment from $120 million to $13 million — a drop in OpenSea's paper value of $1.4 billion.
Coatue has reduced its investment in Web3 payment provider MoonPay by 90 percent.
In the year In January 2022, OpenSea raised $300 million in a Series C round led by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm and Coatue. The NFT platform was valued at $13.3 billion by overinvestment.
Following a stubborn bear market and a year-long decline in NFT trading activity, OpenSea announced a 50% layoff on November 3rd as part of plans to relaunch as OpenSea 2.0.
1/9 OpenSea is making some big changes today to focus on the next version of our product.
— Devin Finzer (@dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) November 3, 2023
According to OpenSea CEO Devin Fitzner, the new version of the platform focuses on improving the technology and increasing the speed and quality. For Fitzner, a small team allows the platform to stay “cool and focused.”
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In August, OpenSea faced criticism after it announced it was ending its operator filter, a feature that allowed developers to list non-royalties that enforce marketplaces.
Coatue's signal reach comes amid declining NFT trading volumes. The sector is set to peak in 2021, with annual sales exceeding $14 billion. Since then, the NFT's popularity has been on the decline, with total trading volume down 80% as of March 2022.
A November 3 report from crypto information firm DappRadar recorded the first month of the NFT market showing a month-over-month increase of $99-million over a year.
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