The risk was in the opportunity cost. How much was he making in the first ~9 years pre IPO? As you said he could have made a comfortable salary working 40hrs/w

The risk was in the opportunity cost. How much was he making in the first ~9 years pre IPO? As you said he could have made a comfortable salary working 40hrs/week at many other companies but likely took a significant pay cut for many years to found a startup. Coinbase was valued at 86B a year ago, so hundreds of millions would have been ~.2% of that valuation.