Jury starts deliberating in ex-OpenSea manager’s NFT insider trading case

Jurors began deliberating on Monday in the trial of a former product manager at OpenSea, the world’s largest marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), for allegedly making trading decisions based on the tokens he featured on the company’s homepage.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last year charged Nathaniel Chastain with netting more than $50,000 in illegal profits by buying NFTs shortly before he decided to showcase them on OpenSea’s website, and then selling them once the assets rose in value shortly afterwards.

“He knew that when he came up with a plan for what to feature on OpenSea’s website, he was supposed to use that for the company, not for his own gain,” prosecutor Thomas Burnett said in his closing argument on Monday. “His greed won out.”