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.