A recent evaluation report from asset manager VanEck examines how the world’s 10 largest public digital asset treasury companies distribute compensation to their executives. The findings from internal document analysis placed Metaplanet at the very bottom. VanEck assigned a ‘Bad’ rating to Metaplanet’s compensation structure, making it the only entity among the 10 companies to fall into the lowest category.
The primary driver lies in the allocation of equity to company insiders. Metaplanet’s equity plan accounts for 14.7% of its fully diluted shares. Of that percentage, the specific allocation for the company’s executive leadership reaches 8.2%.
Side Effects of Share Issuance
The 8.2% figure for company officers stands out sharply when compared to its competitors. Metaplanet’s executive exposure is 10 times higher than the average of nine peer companies, which cap their share at 0.8%. Metaplanet’s total equity plan is also nearly four times the crypto treasury industry average.
This accumulation of stock options stems from legacy reserve rules. The surge in options was triggered by a previous mechanism that automatically added new stock options whenever the company issued shares to fund Bitcoin purchases. This system caused their option reserves to balloon from an initial 46 million shares to 319.5 million shares.
Contrast with Top Performers
Metaplanet is a Japanese publicly traded company that has adopted cryptocurrency as its treasury reserve. It ranks as the world’s third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder with 43,000 BTC in holdings, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net data. Despite its massive Bitcoin reserves, the way it manages executive incentives stands in stark contrast to top-tier companies.
As a point of comparison, Strategy, which holds the title of the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, has taken a more conservative approach. Strategy maintains an equity plan of 2% of its fully diluted shares, with exposure for corporate officers kept down to 0.5%. This discipline in limiting share allocations to executives led VanEck to award Strategy’s compensation structure a ‘Good’ rating.
Reported by Cointelegraph.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
