Crypto companies were starving for talent, eager to pull people in from the "Web 2.0" world with lavish salaries. He recognized their desperation and negotiated a gigantic executive comp package. Also accurately sized-up Brian Armstrong as a lightweight who will eagerly sign-on anyone who strokes his ego.
His major accomplishment was the Coinbase NFT marketplace and then checked out. He spent all of 2022 doing god-tier quiet-quitting.
He's not the only one whose done this: Balaji Srinivasan got hired on and did something similar with Coinbase's learning platform. Massive comp packages for executives doing C- work and still collecting atta-boys from the CEO. That guy used shareholder money to shitpost on twitter and build his personal brand.
This is like the opposite of hustle. Don't you think you are supporting getting massive compensation for essentially being bad at your job? Do you think it's ok because it happens to a large corporation? I can understand feeling happy at the big corporation's misery but respect isn't what is owed to this dude.
Edit: Another thing, at least some of that shareholder money came from retail investors. Even if it's 1% it's still over a million dollars scammed from just the normal people.
