In a striking revelation for the crypto industry, a new report from Dragonfly Capital highlights a troubling trend: despite Bitcoin’s remarkable rally, salaries and incentives across the cryptocurrency landscape have taken a downturn in 2024 and early 2025. This eyebrow-raising information, gathered from a robust survey of 85 companies and nearly 3,400 data points, paints a sobering picture of an evolving market still grappling with immature compensation structures compared to more established sectors.
While Bitcoin enthusiasts celebrate its ascent, the reality for many workers in the crypto space is far less rosy. The report categorizes this period as “a down market,” indicating a significant shift in hiring dynamics and compensation strategies. It seems the promising earlier days of crypto, where salaries soared along with digital assets, may be a distant memory for many.
Notably, entry-level roles have been hit the hardest, making up a mere 10% of all positions surveyed. These junior staff members have seen substantial cuts in their salaries and token packages as the industry recalibrates its approach to compensation.
This stark statistic underscores a challenging competition for emerging talent in an industry that’s grown increasingly competitive.
Interestingly, while entry-level positions struggle, compensation for more senior roles has seen an uptick. The report reveals a “barbell effect,” where senior and principal-level positions—comprising 37% of total roles—experience meaningful compensation increases, especially in engineering. In fact, engineering roles dominate the landscape, making up around 67% of the workforce. It’s a perplexing contrast: as executive pay rises—international engineering executives are now outpacing their U.S. counterparts, with total compensation reaching between $530,000 to $780,000—many in mid-level and entry roles are left grappling with stagnant or declining wages.
In a sector that thrives on innovation, the compensation strategies can feel counterintuitive, with most gains seemingly concentrated at the top while the rest of the workforce faces challenging conditions. Surprisingly, product management executives enjoy the highest salaries, ranging from $390,000 to $484,000. Such figures starkly contrast the freezing or even decreasing salaries faced by junior employees. Is this sustainable? Only time will tell.
This recent downturn stands in sharp contrast to the explosive hiring landscape seen in mid-2025, where crypto job postings surged by 60% year-over-year, according to CryptoJobs data. A separate study by Taurex highlighted the U.S. as a leader in crypto job listings, boasting an average salary of $148,100, followed by the UAE’s $111,483 average. Yet now, the atmosphere feels markedly different.
Despite these trends, founders in the industry have reason to celebrate. Their compensation has surged by approximately 37% year-on-year, climbing from $144,000 in 2023 to an impressive $197,000 in 2024/25. Foreign founders at the Series A level benefit from higher compensation than their U.S. counterparts, indicating a global trend that favors international talent. This imbalance raises questions about equity across the workforce and how sustainable these discrepancies can be moving forward.
Interestingly, bonus adoption rates vary drastically across different sectors within crypto. Centralized finance (CeFi) boasts the highest bonus adoption rate at 71%, while decentralized finance (DeFi) trails behind at 50%. Infrastructure and Layer 1/2 companies see much lower adoption rates, sometimes as low as 15% to 30%. This indicates differing business models and financial strategies at play within the crypto ecosystem.
Such disparities highlight the challenges companies face in balancing employee expectations with their financial realities.
As companies reassess their hiring and compensation strategies, it’s noteworthy that hiring momentum remains stable or even increasing for many firms, with half reporting stable hiring and 47% indicating increases. However, the hiring cycle is a lengthy process, averaging about 3.8 weeks and involving four interview steps, with a solid 68% of offers accepted. Nevertheless, compensation has proven to be the primary reason for declines in job offers, with 83% attributing this to insufficient pay offerings and competing offers from other firms.
This points to a potential crisis of competitiveness in attracting necessary talent in a dynamic industry.
Interestingly, the geographic landscape is shifting under the pressure of remote work dynamics. Western Europe continues to be the prime hiring hub, with a whopping 84% of Series B through E companies employing personnel from that region. However, Asia’s hiring share has nearly doubled, escalating from 20% to 41%. This trend indicates a robust move towards global-first hiring strategies, with 81% of companies now recruiting internationally instead of being geographically confined to the U.S.With remote work policies sticking around—54% of companies are fully remote—flexibility is becoming a crucial aspect of the modern workplace in this sector.
As we navigate this transformative period in the cryptocurrency industry, it’s essential to watch how these dynamics shift in the employment landscape. With an attrition rate averaging 7.8% overall, spikes occurring among smaller companies suggest that the struggle to retain talent remains real. Job mismatch and better offers from competitors contribute significantly to employee turnover, while firms are grappling with the dual challenge of finding qualified candidates and meeting compensation expectations.The crypto industry, once thought to offer boundless opportunities, is at a crossroads. Will it adapt to create a robust framework for all levels of employees, or will it continue to favor those at the executive level while the rest of the workforce faces uncertainty? Time will reveal the answers, but for those navigating this space, it’s clear that the road ahead requires vigilance and adaptability.
While specialized roles—such as zero-knowledge cryptographers, blockchain developers, smart contract engineers, and legal advisors—remain in high demand and command impressive salaries, the broader narrative prompts a deeper reflection. The crypto playground is maturing, but are companies truly ready to nurture the diverse talent pool necessary for its sustained growth? Only by fostering a more equitable compensation approach can the crypto industry hope to thrive in the future.