https://ift.tt/3eSD4zO Is Valued At $13.3 Billion With The ETH NFT Market Booming

OpenSea is valued at $13.3 billion after it had the second-best month for Ethereum NFT volume at the end of 2021 as we can see more in our latest Ethereum news today.

The Series C funding round was led by Coatue and Paradigm where OpenSea raised $100 million in a Series B back in July 2021. The leading NFT marketplace OpenSea announced that it raised $300 million in a Series C funding round so now OpenSea is valued at $13.3 billion. KRH as the current holding name for the new fund from former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun confirmed that it took part in the round, a 16z participated in both the Series A, B, and Haun holds a huge board seat on the marketplace.

In a blog post announcing the funding, OpenSea Co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer said the money will be used to boost the product development and to hire more staff while improving customer support and helping grow the bigger NFT and Web3 space. Finzer said in a statement:

“Our vision is to be the destination for these new open digital economies to thrive. We’ll start this year by lowering the barriers to entry to the NFT space on OpenSea and investing in the ecosystem and the community that powers it.”

OpenSea was valued at $1.5 billion after the Series B round that brought in $100 million and The Information reported that it was set for $10 billion valuations after the Series C. The $13.3 billion figure OpenSea reported today only shows the growing appeal of NFT’s blockchain-based deeds of ownership to digital items. OpenSea hosted some of the most popular ethereum-based NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. OpenSea’s monthly volume continued to impress, months after a lot of people declared non-fungible tokens a fad back in June as the initial frenzy cooled. The NFT market caught fire again and OpenSea registered the second-biggest month ever with $3 billion worth of ETH NFTs trading hands.

It hasn’t slowed down in the new year so far and it had its third-best trading day on January 2 with $243 million in ETH NFT volume. The Polygon NFT trading volume is on the rise and growing in three consecutive months to hit $76.1 million in December. As a part of the fundraising announcement, Finzer announced that OpenSea hired former Facebook executive Shiva Rajaraman as a new VP of Product. OpenSea’s previous head of product was Nate Chastain who left the company after he discovered he used inside information to purchase NFTs before they appeared on the marketplace and sold them at a profit.