Global e-commerce giant eBay completed the acquisition of NFT trading platform Known Origin in June 2022, incorporated it into the Web3 department, and is committed to providing a new generation of NFT creators, sellers and buyers. provide support. This move marks eBay’s strategic layout in the field of digital assets. Two months later, eBay spent another US$295 million to acquire TC Gplayer, an online trading platform for game cards, further expanding its influence in the NFT market. This series of acquisitions shows eBay’s emphasis on the NFT and digital asset fields and its active exploration of the development trend of the future digital economy.
These two acquisitions once made headlines, marking a major entry into the emerging NFT field by the global e-commerce giant.
eBay laid off more than 30% of its employees in the Web3 department
However, according to NFTgators citing people familiar with the matter, the company seems to be changing its Web3 layout and re-evaluating its NFTs strategy. According to reports, Stef Jay, chief of business and strategy of the department, recently resigned, and David Moore, one of the founders of Known Origin, was laid off, totaling more than 30% of the Web3 team members.
According to reports, the partnership between eBay and Known Origin is increasingly tense, and all digital art-related plans have been suspended at the same time, which has brought uncertainty to the future of NFTs on the eBay platform. Many employees within the company are dissatisfied and believe the layoffs reflect problems with leadership and strategy, people familiar with the matter said. This dissatisfaction has even spread to senior management, who have questioned the capabilities of the people currently responsible for Web3 and eBay's strategy team.
Currently, neither eBay nor Known Origin has publicly responded to this matter.
GameStop closed the NFT market in early February
After experiencing huge growth in the bull market in 2021, the NFT market ushered in the crypto winter in 2022 and faced huge challenges. It was not until October last year that the market began to slowly recover, but the overall NFT transaction volume still saw a sharp drop of 63%.
Many traditional companies have actually withdrawn from the Web3 business. For example, in mid-January this year, the American video game retailer GameStop announced that it would close its NFT trading market on February 2 due to regulatory reasons. On the 2nd day of its launch in July 2022, the market set a record of trading volume of more than 3,100 Ethereum coins, worth approximately US$3.5 million at the time, surpassing the trading volume of the Coinbase NFT market by nearly twice. However, it has since receded as the NFT craze has , the market gradually declined due to competition from other NFT trading markets, and now it has withdrawn from the market.
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