Those charts look way less dire than I would have expected. June isn't halfway through yet. So I'm not sure what to think of that.

But prior to June, they had been doing ~$200M in "fees" monthly -- fairly consistently, for almost a year. That's more of a "business" (and more stable) than I would have guessed.

Most of those $200M in fees are Ethereum gas fees that are being burnt on-chain. Those aren't income for OpenSea, they're costs incurred by all parties as part of doing business.

OpenSea's fees is 2.5% of each transaction. There's a creator fee on top of that which the creator can decide. It usually ranges between 2.5-7.5%.

On average, you should assume that OpenSea takes around 30-40% from this 200M fees.

I do not think they are gas fees, that wouldn't make sense. The description on that chart states: > Combined OpenSea and seller fees

Opensea takes a % fee, and the seller takes a % fee. Can you prove it's also including gas fees?

Even then the dollar value is only the magic fantasy price you'd get if you could turn those coins into dollars but not affect the price by the fact of that sale.

ETH has enough liquidity to easily absorb that volume tbh.

I suppose those fees would be the lower limit of the subjective value provided to the participants.

Otherwise they wouldn't trade.

I see the point and I agree with you. But let me point out 2 things for the sake of being scientifically correct:

  * we're just at the middle of the month
  * the price has dropped 4x, those charts are in USD

So comparing June (14 days) to Dec is not entirely fair.

Your point still stands.

That's the problem - your expenses (salaries, rent, hosting, etc.) are paid in USD.

Meanwhile, your revenue is in ETH.

Even if you can maintain the same volume, your revenue can drop drastically if ETH price drops.

A 100 ETH sale earns you 2.5 ETH. In January, this was worth $7.5k. Now, its worth $3k. Your revenue dropped by over 50% but your expenses are going to stay the same.

I can't see how the economics of businesses like this can work out.

> your expenses (salaries, rent, hosting, etc.) are paid in USD.

nobody (sane at least) would mix expenses and long term, high volatility investment as crypto. I own some crypto and I don't care today's price, it's a 10y investment.

Except in this case, its unavoidable - unless your employees and landlords and hosting companies accept crypto. Your revenue will always be in ETH (or other native tokens). Your expenses will always be in USD (or local currency). Which is what makes this model unsustainable.

Unless you're immediately converting crypto to fiat.

how does that matter in this situation? You get paid in ETH. ETH was $3k in January. Its $1.2k now. Ergo, your income is now $1.2k, not $3k since your fee is fixed.

oooof.