There are exactly two kinds of people in Bitcoin. The ones who hold the coin. And the ones who hold the stock of a company that holds the coin, and quietly get diluted into poverty by the executives running it.
Yesterday, VanEck — the same firm whose name is on billions of dollars of Bitcoin ETF inflows — published a report grading the executive compensation of the ten largest digital asset treasury companies. One company landed in the lowest category. Exactly one.
Metaplanet.
That’s the Japanese outfit that loves to call itself Bitcoin’s answer to Strategy. The company that ultra-bullish shareholders poured money into so it could stack sats on the corporate balance sheet. The third-largest publicly traded corporate Bitcoin holder on earth, sitting on roughly 43,000 BTC.
And here is what only the people who actually read the report noticed: its executive compensation structure is Bad. Capital B. The only “Bad” grade VanEck handed out to any of the ten biggest Bitcoin treasuries.
The receipts: Metaplanet’s equity plan equaled 14.7% of fully diluted shares, and its officer exposure sat at 8.2%. The other nine companies average just 0.8% officer exposure — Metaplanet’s officers are holding ten times the equity exposure of every other treasury firm combined, and nearly four times the peer average overall.
How did that happen? The company’s old compensation structure let its option pool expand automatically every time it issued shares to buy Bitcoin. Buy more BTC, print more executive stock. The pool ballooned from 46 million shares to 319.5 million — roughly 273 million bonus shares created out of thin air, on top of every shareholder’s head.
Shareholders screamed. Metaplanet finally ended the automatic expansion in August and cut the pool by 41% in September. But VanEck says the fix still falls “well short of the mark” — and here’s the kicker: unless the already-granted shares are clawed back, the dilution has already happened. The free money is already in executive pockets.
Now compare that to the company Metaplanet is desperate to imitate. Strategy — the largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world — runs an equity plan at just 2% of fully diluted shares with 0.5% officer exposure. VanEck graded it “Good”. Its equity reserve is fixed, and any increase requires a shareholder vote.
That’s the whole game in one comparison: one company makes shareholders vote before enriching executives. The other let executives enrich themselves as a side effect of every Bitcoin purchase.
Love Is Bitcoin Takeaway: This is what the “Bitcoin treasury” trade really is. You buy the stock hoping to ride the coin. The people running it are riding you. Every share they print to pay themselves is a tax on your position — and unlike Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply, corporate share counts have no cap at all.
If you want Bitcoin exposure, hold Bitcoin. Real Bitcoin. On a wallet with keys you control, not a balance sheet controlled by executives who answer to nobody but themselves. Cut out the middlemen who dilute you for a living.
Start at loveisbitcoin.com/bull and use coupon LOVEISBITCOIN at checkout.
So here’s the question: if the third-biggest corporate Bitcoin holder on Earth happily printed 273 million shares to pay its own officers — while you absorbed every drop of that dilution — why would you ever trust a middleman with your Bitcoin again?
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
Sources: Cointelegraph, VanEck Research report on digital asset treasury executive compensation.
VANECK JUST GRADED BITCOIN’S THIRD-BIGGEST TREASURY ‘BAD’ — THE EXECS PRINTED THEMSELVES 273 MILLION SHARES WHILE YOU BOUGHT THE DIP
