OPENSEA

We started OpenSea in 2017 and nobody cared about NFTs for three years. Then one day in 2021, everyone cared at the same time. Being early is indistinguishable from being wrong — until suddenly it isn't.

At our peak we were processing $5 billion a month in trades. That's more volume than some stock exchanges. For digital pictures. The world is a strange place.

We built the marketplace. We didn't control what people listed on it. When the market corrected, some people blamed us for what they paid for a JPEG. But we're a marketplace, not a financial advisor.

NFTs aren't going away. The speculation might cool down — it already has — but the technology of provable digital ownership is permanent. We're building for the long term, not the hype cycle.

A competitor launched with zero fees and a token airdrop. That's not a business model — that's a customer acquisition cost disguised as a platform. We'll see who's still here in five years.

We went from 30 employees to a $13.3 billion valuation in under a year. The highs were unreal. The correction was also unreal. Both experiences teach you something important about building in crypto.