OpenSea Exec Leaves Just 10 Months After Joining

Brian Roberts, who joined OpenSea after working at Lyft, Walmart and Microsoft, said he will be leaving the company just 10 months after joining.

This is the latest example of cryptocurrency executives resigning amid the ongoing bear market.

OpenSea CFO joins the exit list

As the bull market of the past year progressed and NFTs had taken center stage, OpenSea became the go-to place for anyone looking to get involved with these types of digital assets. Consequently, the company began to expand aggressively, and Brian Roberts took over as CFO in early December.

The tides continue to favor NFTs and the Open Sea in particular, with the market seeing back-to-back months of records. However, the landscape of the cryptocurrency industry could change just as quickly, and NFTs, along with asset prices, fell in the following months. NFT trading volume also fell. OpenSea experienced a 90% decline from January to August.

Fast forward to October 7th and Roberts took to Linkedin to announce that he was leaving the NFT market. As with other similar examples of late, he thanked the company for the opportunity, wished it all the best, and said it was a real pleasure to “build a team literally from the ground up and pick the game-changers.”

While indicating that he will remain an advisor to the OpenSea team, Roberts said he remains optimistic about the future of the company, NFTs and Web 3.

The executives who resigned before Roberts

The cryptocurrency winter has not been kind to everything related to the industry, with many executives working in these companies having to resign.

Perhaps the biggest name to do so was Michael Saylor, who stepped down as CEO of the company he built: MicroStrategy. However, the firm continues its pro-bitcoin strategy, being the largest corporate holder of BTC.

Executives at many of the struggling companies, including Compass Mining and Celsius, also stepped down. The latest to do so were NYDIG President and CEO Yan Zhao and Robert Gutmann.