The United States accuse ex-Opensea employees of the NFT insider trade

US prosecutors have accused a former employee of OpenSea, the popular marketplace for non-funnible tokens, with confidential information, which in their opinion was the first insider trade with digital assets.

An indictment published on Wednesday in the southern district of New York, Nate Chastain, the former product manager of OpenSea, used insider knowledge to secretly buy around 45 NFTS or digital tokens that are artificial works before they were advertised on the homepage of the marketplace.

According to the indictment, the 31-year-old Chastain carried out the program between June and September 2021 "to his personal financial advantage" and usually sold the NFTs for two to five times the purchase price as soon as they were presented on the homepage, which was generated a rush of user interest.

chastain, which was arrested in New York on Wednesday, used anonymous Openea accounts and transferred his funds to several other cryptocurrency accounts to hide his participation, according to the indictment.

He is accused of wire fraud and money laundering, each with a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

"NFTS may be new, but it is not this kind of criminal system," said Damian Williams, US lawyer for the southern district of New York. "Today's charges show the commitment of this office to eradicate insider trade - whether it takes place on the stock exchange or in the blockchain."

The case is the first of its kind that aims at the free -range area of ​​the digital assets and signals the interest of the prosecutors to build the same type of insider trade, which traditionally be raised in connection with regulated financial markets in the loosely regulated market for trading with digital brands.

The alleged events took place last year at the height of a boom in the NFT trade when speculative dealers were crowded into the room, while artists, fashion houses and even sports groups also came onto the market.

Since then, however, the market has cooled down in addition to the more traditional markets for cryptocurrencies, since investors were frightened by the latest interest rate increases.

The alleged activity of Chastain was first brought to light last September, who pursued publicly available transaction data in the Ethereum blockchain, the unchangeable ledger that supports the creation of most NFTs.

OpenSea confirmed the claims and announced that it is initiating an internal examination and developing new guidelines that expressly prohibit such behavior for the first time.

"When we learned about Nate's behavior, we initiated an investigation and finally asked him to leave the company," said a spokesman for OpenSea on Wednesday. "His behavior violated our employee guidelines and was in direct conflict with our basic values ​​and principles."