Insider trading has made its way to the NFT market. This is the first case of its sort involving a non-financial transaction.

Nathaniel Chastain, 31, is the product manager of OpenSea, the world’s largest non-fungible token trading platform.platform, was charged with insider trading by the Manhattan prosecutor’s office on Wednesday. This is the first litigation of its sort involving NFTs. Chastain made 11 trades to purchase 45 NFTs, according to the legislation.

The prosecution thinks that the investigations, which took place between June and September 2021, were based on private information concerning the upcoming deployment of tokens on the OpenSea platform.

Chastain later sold the tokens for two to five times their original price, drawing the attention of authorities. An OpenSea employee sold NFTs for more than four times the price the next day after receiving the “Spectrum of a Ramenfication Theory” token on September 14.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the transactions were carried out using anonymous crypto wallets. Chastain has pled not guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud. The speculator may face up to 20 years in jail under US law.

If found guilty, Chastain will also have to pay a $100,000 fine. The authorities do not believe the NFT to be a new form of criminal conspiracy, according to prosecutor Damian Williams. The judicial commitment of the United States to “extinguish insider trading, whether it occurs in the stock market or on the blockchain,” appears to be unparalleled.