VanEck rated the executive compensation of Metaplanet as "poor," with dilution risks far exceeding those of peers

On Friday, asset management company VanEck released a report on the compensation of executives at the top ten digital asset treasury companies, rating the compensation structure of the Japanese Bitcoin treasury company Metaplanet as "poor," making it the only company to fall into the lowest rating. The report shows that Metaplanet's equity plan corresponds to 14.7% of fully diluted shares, with executive risk exposure at 8.2%, which is ten times the average level of 0.8% for the other nine companies, and the scale of the equity plan is also nearly four times the industry average.

In comparison, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, Strategy, has an equity plan that accounts for only 2% of fully diluted shares, with executive risk exposure at 0.5%, and its compensation structure rated as "good." Metaplanet currently ranks third among publicly listed companies in Bitcoin holdings with 43,000 BTC. VanEck pointed out that the gap partly stems from Metaplanet's previous compensation mechanism: the option pool automatically expanded when the company issued shares to purchase Bitcoin, causing it to swell from 46 million shares to 319.5 million shares, adding approximately 273 million potential shares, which drew criticism from shareholders at the time.

Metaplanet terminated the automatic adjustment mechanism at the end of August and reduced the option pool by 41% to 188.2 million shares in September, but VanEck believes these adjustments are still "far from satisfactory," calling for the retraction of the expansion of approximately 273 million shares in favor of a shareholder-approved compensation plan, while also suggesting that executive compensation be linked to the number of Bitcoins corresponding to each fully diluted share and adopting a written grant timing policy.