According to new findings from asset management company VanEck, due to generous stock compensation plans, executives in the U.S. Bitcoin mining industry earn significantly more than their counterparts in the IT and energy sectors, and shareholders are pushing back.
Despite the "aggressive compensation plans," shareholders of Bitcoin mining companies are "hesitant," said Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, and investment analyst Nathan Frankovitz in a report on Thursday (July 10).
Researchers found that the average approval rate for executive compensation plans among shareholders is only 64%, compared to about 90% for S&P 500 and Russell 3000 companies.
"This skepticism seems justified. Mining executives continue to grant themselves excessive equity awards, diluting shareholder equity without reliably linking compensation to long-term value creation," they added.
The researchers reviewed executive compensation for eight publicly listed U.S. Bitcoin miners: Bit Digital, Cipher Mining, CleanSpark, Core Scientific, Hut 8, MARA Holdings, Riot Platforms, and TeraWulf.
They also found that while Bitcoin mining executives had an average income of $6.6 million in 2023, it nearly doubled to $14.4 million in 2024, far exceeding comparable industries such as energy and technology.
The report shows that compensation is primarily equity-based, with equity awards accounting for 79% of total compensation in 2023 and 89% in 2024.
Riot Platforms' CEO Fred Thiel received the largest equity award of $79.3 million in 2024. This is nearly double that of MARA Holdings and Core Scientific and several times that of other mining CEOs. "The compensation practices of mining executives remain aggressive, with a high equity proportion and often a weak correlation to shareholder outcomes."
The report also highlighted significant discrepancies in aligning compensation with performance. While companies like TeraWulf and Core Scientific paid only 2% of their market value growth to executives, Riot Platforms paid 73% of its market value growth to its named executive officer, totaling $230 million in 2024.
Researchers noted that these discrepancies reflect concerns first raised in 2022 when Riot's shareholders rejected the company's compensation proposal after disclosing nearly $22 million in CEO pay.
In 2025, three of the eight miners faced "significant opposition" to their executive compensation proposals, the researchers reported.
Cointelegraph reached out to Riot Platforms for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
On a positive note, six of the eight miners have adopted multi-year performance stock units (PSUs) linked to stock price targets or relative total shareholder returns, and most companies now support annual say-on-pay votes to increase accountability.
PSUs are a type of equity compensation that executives can only earn if certain performance conditions are met.
VanEck suggests that miners focus on linking bonuses to the cost of mining per coin, combined with capital efficiency measures such as return on invested capital, and strengthen performance requirements for multi-year vesting equity awards.
"As Bitcoin miners evolve into large-scale infrastructure operators, their executive compensation plans must also evolve," they concluded.
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Original article: “VanEck: Investors Hesitant About ‘Excessive’ Bitcoin (BTC) Miner Executive Pay”
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