The title of the article is a bit misleading. It implies that he's leaving with a severance package -- that he was let go by the company -- but the $105M is from selling stock from his original employment package and it seems like he's leaving on his own volition.
It's not that misleading. This isn't an early employee who held onto his shares. He joined less than two years ago. He got an insanely high compensation package.
On the bright side, Coinbase launched a lot of high-value new products during the last two years that will help the company thrive and grow in the coming years.
Coinswitch, a crypto-exchange in India is now pivoting to wealth management:
> We have seven new non-crypto products in our 2023 roster, which includes fixed deposits, ETFs [exchange-traded funds], mutual funds, stocks, bonds and U.S. equities.
> The goal is to be the one-stop wealth-tech destination for every Indian. As we diversify into other asset classes, there are different business models we are experimenting with to check which is the best for customers. There are multiple partnerships in place since we are launching such large-scale assets onto our platform. [Editor’s note: CoinSwitch declined to give the names of partners or detail on licenses obtained to sell non-crypto products.]
> We started off with a mission to make money equal for all. Crypto was the starting point for us but we will continue to innovate towards being a wealth tech platform. We see crypto as an investment class that is offered alongside other assets, to help users build a diversified portfolio.
Coinbase Pets: A custody management solution for storing and transferring pet ownership certificates on the blockchain.
Coinbase Recipies: Cooking recipes stores and exchanged on the blockchain.
Coinbase Ponzi: Turnkey service to create, launch and list your new tokens. Whitepaper generated through partnership with ChatGPT. A16Z investment guaranteed.
HN is full of genuinely delusional people who genuinely say these things. It's part of the reason jokes go so poorly here is that some sane people who read them have read identical statements from serious people so it's never clear when something is a joke.
or, someone spending a few seconds skimming comments while doing something else, and adding a question, without spending enough attention to even comprehend that it might have been satire
He got a pretty typical comp package but he happened to get in right before COIN stock took off, which made it astronomical.
It's like the folks who joined Amazon a few years ago as Staff engineers. Their original comp packages were valued at $200k-$300k per year, but then the stock took off, and they ended up with $1M+ per year. They started with a typical package that was stock heavy and got lucky.
Interestingly the people getting in now are getting screwed for the same reason -- with the stock dropping, their comp package is getting cut in half.
I don’t think it makes sense to compare options with RSUs. The former is worthless in a company that doesn’t grow and it’s necessary to stay with the company until IPO. It’s a huge risk. The latter is closer to cash, bubbles notwithstanding.
The people getting in now aren’t screwed, they can just ask for refreshers. But the previous batch certainly got an unexpected windfall.
