Mastercard NFT leader steps down and tokenizes resignation letter

Mas­ter­card NFT prod­uct lead Satvik Sethi said in a series of tweets on Feb. 2 that he has resigned from that posi­tion, which he has held for the past year.

Sethi said he expe­ri­enced harass­ment and dis­tress due to the company’s man­age­ment. He sug­gest­ed that his salary was denied to him, his employ­ment con­tract was over­rid­den, and that he was blocked from online accounts.

Sethi said that he is mint­ing and sell­ing his res­ig­na­tion let­ter as an NFT priced at 0.023 ETH ($38.00) to sup­port him­self. He said that he will air­drop addi­tion­al art­work to sup­port­ers in the future. Man­i­fold, the app on which buy­ers can mint the token, reports that 38 tokens have been mint­ed at the time of writing.

Sethi also empha­sized the extent of his role at the com­pa­ny. He said that all ques­tions about Web3 ⁠— includ­ing those from part­ners ⁠— were direct­ed to him. He added:

“[Mas­ter­card] might try to dis­cred­it me or down­play my con­tri­bu­tions. But the fact is ⁠— glob­al­ly our part­ners, clients, and region­al teams asso­ciate Mas­ter­card x NFTs with me.”

Mas­ter­card has not com­ment­ed on Sethi’s res­ig­na­tion. Pre­sum­ably, it will con­tin­ue to offer its var­i­ous non-fun­gi­ble token fea­tures despite Sethi’s key role.

In June 2022, Mas­ter­card part­nered with var­i­ous NFT mar­ket­places, includ­ing ImmutableX, Can­dy Dig­i­tal, The Sand­box, Mintable, Spring, and Nifty Gate­way. That part­ner­ship allowed card­hold­ers to buy NFTs with­out pur­chas­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy as an inter­me­di­ate step. A sim­i­lar part­ner­ship with Coin­base pre­ced­ed that effort by sev­er­al months.

Mas­ter­card has also worked with Poly­gon to launch an artist accel­er­a­tor that helps par­tic­i­pants to mint NFTs. The com­pa­ny part­nered with the cryp­to app Hi to offer cus­tomiz­able deb­it cards fea­tur­ing NFT avatars last year.

Out­side of NFTs, Mas­ter­card is also work­ing to offer cryp­to-relat­ed ser­vices, includ­ing trad­ing ser­vices, mon­i­tor­ing tools, and reward options. It also pow­ers pay­ment cards offered by cryp­tocur­ren­cy firms, includ­ing Uphold, Wirex, Nexo, and Bitpay.