Crypto Salaries Are Down This Year Despite Bitcoin’s Historic Rally

Crypto salaries are falling across the board despite Bitcoin’s record-breaking run this year, as companies lean on cost discipline and normalize pay after years of aggressive expansion.

The downturn spans nearly every role and region, with both cash pay and token incentives shrinking from last year’s levels, according to the 2024/2025 Crypto Compensation Report from venture capital firm Dragonfly.

“Overall, we’d call crypto compensation in 2024 and early 2025 a down market, and practices still felt relatively immature compared to traditional sectors,” researchers at the firm wrote.

The pullback marks a cooling period for an industry once defined by explosive growth and outsized rewards.

But as crypto markets stabilize and regulatory frameworks mature, crypto firms appear to be trading speed for structure, reshaping how talent, capital, and risk are distributed across the global crypto ecosystem.

The survey, which compiled data from 85 companies and more than 3,000 roles, found that average total compensation declined across most seniority levels, indicating a broad pullback in pay across the sector.

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Hiring has slowed, averaging 3.8 weeks and four interview rounds per role, with about 68% of offers accepted and most declines linked to pay. Salaries declined across nearly all levels, with mid-level roles experiencing flat growth and entry-level positions absorbing the steepest cuts.

The only meaningful increases came at the executive level, which Dragonfly’s report claims to have created “a barbell effect” most visible across product and engineering roles, concentrating gains at the top while most of the workforce saw stagnating or shrinking pay.

Entry-level positions accounted for about 10% of total roles, while engineering made up roughly two-thirds of headcount, per the report. Non-technical roles in design, product, and marketing were comparatively limited.

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“Across cycles, we’ve seen employers move away from “YOLO tokens” toward structured offers and clearer leveling,” Raman Shalupau, founder and CEO of industry job portal CryptoJobsList, told Decrypt.

The trend reflects a “maturation on process, and a structural skew in who captures upside,” he said, adding that executive and senior roles continued to capture a larger share, mirroring the broader tech sector.

Western Europe continues to dominate the crypto labor landscape, driven by its concentration of venture funding, regulatory clarity, and institutional infrastructure.

European markets, including those in the U.K., Germany, and France, have become anchors for crypto development, supported by mature capital markets and a regulatory climate now shaped by the continental bloc’s push toward a digital euro and public-chain experimentation.

Meanwhile, Asia’s share of hiring nearly doubled from about 20% to over 40% of companies surveyed, according to the report. The U.S. continues to lead in cash pay, while international teams offer greater equity and token incentives.

Shalupau opined that Asia’s growth is “more than cost arbitrage,” but could instead be attributed to “a durable center of gravity, not a temporary budget play.”

Still, despite shifts in geography, working in the crypto industry remains largely remote. Over 54% of firms surveyed were fully remote, compared with just 2% fully in-office, per Dragonfly’s data.