Moonbirds COO, Ryan Carson, Leaves Project for New Fund — Carrying $1 Million in NFTs

Ryan Carson, Moonbirds' previous chief operations officer, revealed on Twitter on Monday that he is leaving the project to establish his own NFT venture fund.

The announcement elicited an instant and angry response from the NFT community, with many expressing displeasure that Carson had purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Moonbirds before leaving, presumably utilizing insider knowledge to grab cheap NFTs.

Carson's collection of Moonbirds is now valued at $1.2 million based on floor pricing alone, with the majority of them purchased before Moonbirds values skyrocketed in the days after the mint.

Following the announcement, the project's founder, Kevin Rose, a veteran internet entrepreneur and Digg co-founder spoke to the Moonbirds community in a Twitter Spaces, saying Carson's actions were against the project's internal guidelines.

During the Spaces event, Rose also stated that he had "no idea" how much money Carson planned to spend on Moonbirds NFTs after the release.

“I think one of the special things about Web 3 is we can be transparent and share and learn from each other,” said Rose. “I can tell you that there’s going to be a kind of communications policy put in place as well, moving forward.”

Moonbirds has a current floor price of 34 ETH (approximately $101,948) and has sold over $330 million worth of tokens since its April 16 launch, the most of any NFT project in the last 30 days.