Asian Tech Press (Dec 30) -- OpenSea CEO has sought to distance NFTs from cryptocurrencies.

Devin Finzer, the CEO of OpenSea, the world's leading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) marketplace, has sought to distance NFTs from cryptocurrencies, as the industry has suffered from a series of scandals in recent times.

Finzer told the Financial Times that the cryptocurrency industry has "had some setbacks lately," citing the collapse of FTX, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges that collapsed in November, triggering a drop in the value of the digital asset.

OpenSea, however, has seen its value soar because NFTs, which can be online collectibles and digital artwork built on the same blockchain technology as cryptocurrencies, has become a hype-fueled market in the past two years.

The OpenSea head insisted that NFTs' future remains bright, believing consumers will continue to spend real money to acquire such digital images and display them at home and in online virtual spaces.

"It is not necessarily the case that NFTs will always be bought and sold in cryptocurrency as they are now," Finzer said. "There are several reasons why that makes sense in today's ecosystem, but as we get broader and more accessible, there's no reason why NFTs couldn't be denominated at least in US dollars."

"NFTs don't exist in a vacuum, there's the overall macro climate that has changed dramatically, and that's impacting consumer spending and the broader crypto climate, which is currently going through a winter," Finzer added.

Founded in December 2017, OpenSea is the world's first and largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and NFTs, now valued at $13.3 billion.