🍜 Insiders gotta eat

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Everyone is searching for top signals.

It could be that crypto is destined to forever follow the global money supply. Any sign of the bull market’s end would then be buried in macroeconomic data. Boring!

Empire is all about giving a look behind the curtain of the crypto industry. 

So let’s instead draw a more interesting correlation: how many shares crypto’s richest executives are cashing in on the way up.

— David Canellis

📊 We like the stock (sales)

First, it’s worth making one thing clear: People are allowed to make money.

If any of us were in the same position, there’s no doubt that we’d be offloading our equity as markets heat up. That’s what it’s there for. 

And boy, have insiders been putting up numbers. 

Since January 1, insiders at just four publicly-traded companies in and around crypto have altogether net sold almost $1.7 billion in company shares.

More than three-quarters of that sum was sold in the past three months alone — during bitcoin’s push from around $103,000 to over $124,000.

The chart below plots those insider stock sales (the colorful columns) against the price of bitcoin (the purple line). 

As you can see, insider sales remained relatively quiet for the first half of the year but ramped up once Circle went public in June. 

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire alone made $46.4 million by selling nearly 1.6 million shares on Circle’s second day of trade, some flowing through a trust. The stock was sold for $29.30 on average, while CRCL’s share price has since climbed past $135 — a 360% increase.

Still, that technically places Allaire in fifth position by value generated by stock sales for 2025 to date, excluding VC firms General Catalyst Group VI and Chuang Xi Capital, which cashed in $104 million and $68.2 million in shares, respectively, directly following Circle’s IPO.

As for who’s been selling the most stock in crypto, at least out of company executives, it’s Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, hands down.

Armstrong has sold $485.8 million in COIN shares so far this year through a trust, per OpenInsider data, which collates SEC filings. 

That’s nearly $85 million more than former Robinhood CEO Bhatt Baiju’s $399.7 million worth of shares, and almost $300 million more than current CEO Vlad Tenev’s $207.1 million.

Not all insiders have been strictly dumping, however. Nine execs from Strategy have actually been buying shares over the past five months or so, led by Peter L. Briger, a recently-appointed company director and former co-CEO at Fortress Investment Group. 

Briger participated in the STRC preferred stock offering in July to the tune of $19.8 million through an LLC. 

What does any of this tell us about where we’re at in the cycle? It’s obviously been hot enough for insiders to start itching for a big payday, it seems. 

Are they savvy enough to have sold the top?

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• Blockchain.com has two new board members as it plots an IPO: Timothy Flynn, former CEO of KPMG and former board director for JP Morgan, as well as Landon Edmond, CLO at Klaviyo.

• Crypto lobbying groups are pushing back against calls from the American Bankers Association to make changes to the GENIUS stablecoin law.

• Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has more-or-less conceded he was wrong about bitcoin’s likelihood to hit $100 rather than $100,000.

It’s the summer of DATs and the party is going strong. 

But when October rolls around, everyone will be looking to DAS: London to hear from these meta-defining voices on where things stand and where they’re headed.

Get your ticket today with promo code: EMPIRENL

📅 October 13-15 | London