Lengthy earlier than the collapse in inventory costs of crypto corporations this 12 months, executives protected themselves with spectacular paydays detailed in Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) filings.
With lavish pay packages that paid out even through the horrible bear market, the effective print tells a wholly totally different story than their public storytelling.
Take into account the manager compensation package deal for David Bailey, Donald Trump ally and CEO of bitcoin (BTC) treasury firm Nakamoto.
Regardless of its 98% inventory value decline, Nakamoto filed exhibit 10.15 to its August 11 type 8-Ok during which it admitted to paying an organization that Bailey controls, BTC Consulting LLC:
A $250,000 signing bonus
A month-to-month consulting charge of $58,333
An preliminary grant of 5 million NAKA inventory choices
$1 million in restricted inventory items
Eligibility for $2.1 million in annual cash-based incentive bonuses
Free use of a non-public jet
Shares of NAKA, which closed at $14.28 on August 11, are actually value lower than $0.45 apiece. Worse, Bailey has led the corporate since its all-time excessive of $34.77 in Might — and remained in cost as shares collapsed 98.7%.
Michael Saylor retains his billions regardless of how low Technique falls
As egregious as Bailey’s pay package deal is, it pales compared to the compensation of Michael Saylor, founding father of the biggest crypto firm buying and selling on US exchanges moreover Coinbase.
Down 60% from a peak market capitalization of $124.7 billion on July 17 to $49 billion at present, Saylor has nonetheless made billions of {dollars} personally from main Technique (previously MicroStrategy).
Thanks principally to a particular sort of Class B inventory that grants him 10:1 voting rights, plus awards from his founder-friendly board of inventory choices and convertibles, Saylor’s private web value might be north of $5 billion.
He’s stored these billions regardless of a 61% decline within the firm’s widespread inventory during the last 12 months.
Take into account one other instance of Anthony Pompliano’s $400 million government compensation package deal from ProCap. That payday sparked a hostile shareholder letter by Paul Glazer.
Shares of Columbus Circle Capital Corp. I, a SPAC that may have taken Pompliano’s ProCap public, briefly rallied above $16 in June on preliminary optimism concerning the podcaster and media influencer.
As shares fell again to their $10 pre-merger announcement, Glazer devoured up a 7.7% stake and publicized his staunch objection to Pompliano’s proposal.
Certainly, Pompliano structured his compensation to exit with at the least $50 million personally — even when the inventory value halved from $10 to $5.
He even added a $10 million money payout for himself for any early termination with out trigger.
Crash-proof compensation for crypto execs
Extra examples are plentiful. Through the peak of the bubble in crypto treasury corporations in Might, DeFi Improvement Company agreed to pay CEO Joseph Onorati an annual wage of $574,000 plus a 200% bonus risk if the corporate achieved ‘WAGMI Tier’ milestones.
WAGMI is a crypto acronym for “We’re All Gonna Make It.” His inventory value is down 48% since that press launch.
In 2024, Core Scientific elevated CEO Adam Sullivan’s private compensation to $41.9 million, a 47x improve from 2023.
Regardless of this staggering improve, the corporate’s inventory value has stagnated in 2025, buying and selling precisely flat 12 months up to now.
At Solana treasury firm Upexi, CEO Allan Marshall’s private wage is $840,000, plus a six-month restricted inventory grant of 75,000 shares and additional warrants to buy 500,000 shares at a $2.28 strike over 5 years.
Regardless of all of this supposed motivation, Upexi’s share value collapsed to lower than the worth of its Solana holdings.
Like Glazer’s activist opposition to Pompliano, some shareholders have realized that they’ll vote towards these unimaginable pay packages. Already, shareholders of BTC mining corporations have opposed 36% of latest government pay proposals — an oppositional voting price that’s 29% greater than the S&P 500 common.
