The non-fungible token (NFT) product lead at Mastercard, Satvik Sethi, has resigned from his position at the payment company, minting and selling his resignation letter as an NFT for “survival.”
Sethi detailed why he decided to leave in a series of tweets on February 2, saying that he had been a victim of harassment and emotional distress caused by a series of “mismanaged processes, miscommunication, and internal inefficiency.”
I have resigned from @Mastercard.
For the past year, I served as the ‘NFT Product Lead.’ I evangelized Web3 for Mastercard leadership & regional teams, as well as all our Fortune 500 clients & partners.
This wasn’t easy but read on for why it was necessary, and what’s next 🧵: pic.twitter.com/kqiavsSIW7
— Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 2, 2023
He maintained that he had to move from New York City to London because of visa issues, and his salary was cut by 40% with his workload increasing by 200%. Sethi continued,
“I had to work side jobs this past year to make ends meet, alongside all the things I was building and contributing in Web3,”
In his tweets, Sethi said being an immigrant is difficult, but not many people understand that. He claimed he had been separated from friends and family twice and had been forced to live his life at the behest of his employer.
When Sethi told Mastercard human resources about his concerns, he alleged that he was told that he would need to give three months’ notice before leaving the company. Sethi claims this was done to prevent him from quitting.
Moreover, Sethi claimed in his tweet thread that Mastercard had locked his accounts, preventing him from accessing the ideas he had spent months designing.
He shared a picture of what appeared to be his login screen, which says,
“Your account has been locked.” “Contact your support person to unlock it, then try again.”
Sethi mints his resignation letter as an NFT
Now, Satvik Sethi has decided to mint his resignation letter as an open-edition NFT through the digital collectibles protocol Manifold, stating that 100% of the profits “go to survival.” The “New Beginnings” project is priced at 0.023 ETH (about $38) each. At the time of writing, 62 NFTs had been minted.
Sethi thanked his Twitter followers for their support and expressed his relief at being able to share the thread after working on it for more than a year.
Mastercard has not made a comment on Sethi’s resignation. Probably, it will continue to provide its various non-fungible token functionalities despite Sethi’s key role.
Mastercard has gradually embraced NFT and cryptocurrency payments. It had formed alliances with various NFT marketplaces, allowing cardholders to purchase NFTs without first purchasing cryptocurrency as an intermediate step.
