Executives at U.S.-listed Bitcoin mining firms are earning significantly more than their counterparts in the tech and energy sectors, largely due to generous stock-based compensation — and investors are starting to push back, according to a new report from asset manager VanEck.
Despite receiving what VanEck calls “aggressive compensation packages,” shareholders of Bitcoin mining companies are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction. In a Thursday report, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, Matthew Sigel, and investment analyst Nathan Frankovitz, noted that investor support for these executive pay packages averaged just 64% — a sharp contrast to the roughly 90% approval seen across companies in the S&P 500 and Russell 3000.
“That skepticism appears well-founded,” the report stated. “Mining executives continue to grant themselves oversized equity awards that dilute shareholders without reliably linking pay to long-term value creation.”
VanEck’s analysis covered executive compensation at eight U.S.-listed Bitcoin miners: Bit Digital, Cipher Mining, CleanSpark, Core Scientific, Hut 8, MARA Holdings, Riot Platforms, and TeraWulf.
The findings reveal that average executive pay in the sector nearly doubled from $6.6 million in 2023 to $14.4 million in 2024 — far outpacing compensation trends in comparable industries.
Stock-based compensation
The report revealed that compensation is largely stock-based, with equity awards making up 79% of total executive pay in 2023 and rising to 89% in 2024.
Riot Platforms CEO Fred Thiel received the highest equity award in 2024 at $79.3 million — nearly twice as much as the grants awarded to MARA Holdings and Core Scientific, and several times greater than those received by other Bitcoin mining CEOs.
“Miner executive pay practices remain aggressive, equity-heavy, and often weakly aligned with shareholder outcomes.”
Significant gaps in executive compensation
The report also pointed to significant imbalances in the alignment between executive pay and company performance. For instance, while firms like TeraWulf and Core Scientific allocated just 2% of their market cap growth to executive compensation, Riot Platforms awarded a staggering 73%—amounting to $230 million in 2024—to its named executive officers.
These disparities reflect long-standing concerns, the researchers noted, citing Riot’s 2022 shareholder vote rejecting the company’s say-on-pay proposal after disclosing nearly $22 million in CEO compensation.
By 2025, three out of the eight Bitcoin miners reviewed had faced “striking rebukes” from shareholders over their executive pay packages.
Performance-based equity awards and vesting schedules
On a more positive note, six of the eight Bitcoin mining companies have implemented performance stock units (PSUs) with multi-year vesting schedules linked to share price targets or relative total shareholder return. Additionally, most now support annual say-on-pay votes, signaling a move toward greater accountability.
PSUs are a form of equity compensation granted to executives, but only vest if specific performance benchmarks are achieved.
VanEck recommended that mining firms further improve executive pay structures by tying bonuses to metrics like cost per coin mined, incorporating capital efficiency measures such as return on invested capital, and enforcing more rigorous performance criteria for equity awards with long-term vesting.
“As Bitcoin miners evolve into large-scale infrastructure operators, their executive compensation frameworks must mature accordingly,” the report concluded.
