Upbit staff outearn employees at South Korea’s biggest banks

South Korean crypto exchange Upbit is making waves not just in crypto but in cashing out big time. 

While the country’s traditional banking sector has been holding down the fort for decades, Upbit’s crew is laughing all the way to the bank—or more fittingly, the blockchain. 

Their paychecks this year are turning heads, leaving even the CEOs of South Korea’s biggest banks looking like they’re on minimum wage.

The first half of this year saw Upbit’s top execs and employees making more money than some of the wealthiest bankers in the country. 

Song Dong-hyung, the chairman of Upbit’s parent company, Dunamu, pocketed a cool 4.75 billion won (around $3.55 million). Most of that was a massive bonus—3.3 billion won (about $2.47 million) to be exact. 

For comparison, last year, he earned between 1.33 billion and 1.4 billion won. So yeah, his earnings shot up by 3.4 times compared to the same time last year. Not bad, right?

Upbit’s earnings blow traditional banking out of the water

If we’re talking about money, let’s bring up the big boys. Citibank Korea’s chairman Yoo Myung-soon, who has probably been feeling pretty good about his paycheck, made a total of 2.085 billion won (roughly $1.56 million) in the same period.

That includes his salary of 280 million won and a bonus of 1.79 billion won. 

And over at Hana Financial Group, Chairman Ham Young-joo pulled in 1.82 billion won ($1.36 million). That’s including his salary and bonuses too. But even with their bonuses stacked on top, they still didn’t come close to what Song is hauling in.

But Song isn’t even the only one swimming in cash. The average Dunamu employee is doing better than most of South Korea’s top bankers. In the first half of this year, the 601 people working at Dunamu made an average of 133.73 million won (about $100,000). 

That’s more than double what they were earning last year during the same period when they took home 59.44 million won. The average Dunamu worker is earning more in six months than some of South Korea’s top bankers make in an entire year. 

Last year, employees at the four biggest banks—KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, and Woori—earned an average of 116 million won ($87,000) annually. Dunamu employees are crushing that figure, and they’re doing it in half the time.