US technology investment firm Coatue Management has slashed the value of its stake in the non-fungible token platform by 90% (NFT) offshore.
News on November 7, report A document they reviewed showed that Coatue had reduced its investment from $120 million to $13 million, meaning OpenSea had lowered its paper valuation to $1.4 billion.
Coatue also reduced its investment in Web3 payments provider MoonPay by 90%.
In January 2022, OpenSea raised $300 million in Series C funding led by crypto venture capital firms Paradigm and Coatue. The huge investment has made the NFT platform worth $13.3 billion.
After a prolonged bear market and a year-long decline in NFT trading activity, OpenSea announced on November 3 that it would lay off 50% of its staff as part of its relaunch of OpenSea 2.0.
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OpenSea is making some big changes today to focus on the next version of our product.— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) November 3, 2023
OpenSea CEO Devin Fizner said the new version of the platform will focus on upgrading technology and improving speed and quality. For Fizner, a smaller team will keep the platform “agile and thoughtful.”
Coatue’s exit comes amid a decline in NFT trading volumes. The industry peaked in 2021, with revenue exceeding $14 billion that year. Since then, NFTs have steadily declined in popularity, with total transaction volume down 80% since March 2022.
A report on November 3 by encryption data company DappRadar showed that the NFT market recorded its first monthly growth in more than a year, with a month-on-month increase of US$99 million in October.
