In a post that was published on LinkedIn on October 7, the former chief financial officer of the ride-sharing platform Lyft and OpenSea stated that it was time for him to “come ashore” from the “open seas.” However, he did not elaborate on the specific reasons for the change, instead stating that he would be staying on as an advisor to the company moving forward.
After seven years of service at Lyft, Roberts was offered and accepted a position as the Chief Financial Officer of OpenSea in December of 2021. Additionally, he has worked for the multinational corporation Microsoft and the American retailing behemoth Walmart in the past.
While he was working at OpenSea, one of his primary objectives was to expand the size of the financial staff. In his Linkedin post, Roberts said, “I had the unusual chance to construct a team essentially from the bottom up and chose game changers.”
It is noteworthy that Roberts resigned on the same day another OpenSea official said he would leave his position.
Ryan Foutty, Vice President of Business Development at OpenSea, announced his retirement from the company after serving there for 18 months in a post that he made on LinkedIn on October 7.
Remarks from Roberts after His Departure
Roberts was a long line of seasoned technology professionals who transitioned to Web3 over the past few years. Others in this group include; Surojit Chatterjee, a former vice president at Google, who joined Coinbase as its chief product officer in 2020, and Pravjit Tiwana, formerly of Amazon, who joined Gemini as its chief technology officer in January 2022.
According to his statement, he has been working closely with CEO Devin Finzer and VP of Strategic Finance Justin Jow to guarantee a “smooth transition.” This might indicate that Jow will step up and take over the position of CFO, which has just become vacant.
Roberts says that he is still “extremely enthusiastic about web3,” notwithstanding his resignation from the chief financial officer job.
Since beginning operations in co-founder Alex Atallah’s basement, the firm has gone a long way, according to Foutty, who wished his “crewmates” success and reflected on the company’s history.
In the midst the present bear market for cryptocurrencies, both Roberts and Foutty are the most recent crypto executives to step down from their respective positions.
The NFT marketplace has also been negatively impacted by the drastic reduction of 20% of its workforce in July and large decreases in the daily trading volume.
The whole market had a steep drop off a cliff in May, coinciding with the beginning of a continuing bear market in cryptocurrencies.
Several other prominent executives, such as the president of FTX US, Brett Harrison, the CEO of Kraken, Jesse Powell, the CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, and the CEO of Genesis Trading, Michael Moro, have announced that they would be leaving their respective companies.
The trading volume of NFTs has dropped by 98%, from $6.2 billion towards the end of January to the current $114.4 million.
