The startup world celebrates stories of founders who scratch and claw for years and, finally, become multi-millionaires when the business they built goes public or is acquired. These tales of wealth are common in crypto too—though the path to a big payday is often much shorter.

Case in point: Bam Azizi founded crypto payments firm Mesh in 2020, and this August raised $130 million in a so-called Series B funding round. In the ordinary course of things, capital raised in a Series A or Series B round goes almost entirely to fund a startup’s growth. But in this case, the round included at least $20 million for Azizi himself.

The payout came via secondary sales, which entail investors purchasing shares held by the founder or others involved early in the startup’s existence. Such sales mean th

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