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A BSC shitcoin “CEO” [serious]ly sold his house and is now suing Crypto.com because they got phished by a scammer.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

SC Takes Enforcement Action against Huobi Global for Illegally Operating DAX in Malaysia - Media Releases

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DAX Looking to End 5 Waves Elliott Wave Impulse

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Can I trade Crypto the same way I used to trade Forex and Index ?

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

My bizzare experience with Crypto.com. Courious if you had experienced anything similar?

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Has anyone experienced anything similar?

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Bitcoin Bias - what’s next

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

$Daxe - The next 12,000% HEX version| Strong Use Case that rewards holders | Big Launch |100% Sustainable APY | Just buy, hodl and watch your portfolio grow!

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Sell now? Crash in Bitcoin and Co. continues: 5 reasons against panic

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

Daxe Token - $DAXE 💎| The Next 12,000% HEX Version 📈 | Initial launch on Bsc, Avax, Vlx, Solana and Pulsechain | Low Market Cap and great opportunity to buy |Don't miss out on this 💣

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

Daxe Token - $DAXE 💎| The Next 12,000% HEX Version 📈 | Initial launch on Bsc, Avax, Vlx, Solana and Pulsechain| Low Market Cap and good opportunity to buy| Don't miss out 💣

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

2 crypto guys created an ads platform powered by the blockchain to dethrone big tech (and it's working)

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

2 crypto guys created an ads platform powered by the blockchain to dethrone big tech (and it's working)

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

🐉 Dragon X ($DAX) ✅ Low Cap | BSC & ETH 🌪 Highly Disruptive ✅ DeFi Blockchain powered ads platform 🪙 Uses its own utility Token🪣 Limited supply🔥 Daily burning 🤑 233% Staking rewards 👏 Doxed, transparent and active Devs

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Where to convert CRO to BTC(bitcoin) the best?

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

TIL: Crypto.com connects to Exchange APIs, Blockchains, and CSVs to prep tax records too.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Which Crypto Exchange Is Best?

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

Daxe Token - $DAXE 💎| The Next 12,000% HEX Version 📈 | Initial launch on Bsc, Avax, Vlx, Solana and Pulsechain | Low Market Cap and great opportunity to buy |Don't miss out on this 💣

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

Daxe Token - $DAXE 💎| The Next 12000% HEX Version 📈 | Initial launch on Bsc, Avax, Vlx, Solana and Pulsechain| Low Market Cap and great opportunity to buy |Don't miss out 💣

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

Daxe Token - $DAXE 💎| The Next 12,000% HEX Version 📈 | Initial launch on Bsc, Avax, Vlx, Solana and Pulsechain| Low Market Cap and good opportunity to buy|Don't miss out 💣

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

DAXE Token

r/CryptoMoonShotsSee Post

DAXE Token

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

We've put together a fully-functional advertising platform for DeFi powered by $DAX

r/BitcoinSee Post

Foris DAX Global Limited

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Interview with Markus Kaulartz (german lawyer) of CMS "No established bank will drive this market"

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Next few weeks are really important for BTC and Crypto

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For those who are scared about this correction, here is some information

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Comparison: Stable-coins' Purchases w/ Credit Cards. The Fees, and KYCs. Malaysian (Asia) perspective post-Government Restriction on Binance.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Bitcoin prices and google trends

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) today announced enforcement actions against Binance for illegally operating a Digital Asset Exchange (DAX).

r/CryptoCurrencySee Post

Crypto.com question

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#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

tldr; Crypto.com has been granted a license to operate specified virtual asset service activities in Dubai. The license has been granted to its Dubai entity, CRO DAX Middle East FZE, after receiving a minimal viable product (MVP) preparatory approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in March. This marks a significant regulatory victory for Crypto.com, as it continues to expand its operations globally. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Thay have some DAX coins I was interested in. But I think its scam bait.

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

German IT usually is not the best... heck some customers at work ask me if I can send them a fax... And those are "AG" customers listed in DAX

Mentions:#AG#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Unpopular opinion: If you are still heavily underwater, you made awful investments and should seriously question them. BTC is up +120%, spy rallied, DAX hit new ATH, lots of major equities hit new highs, many alt coins have hit a 2-5x from their lows and show strength with every BTC pump. This entire “BTC rallies first then alts follow” might be true in the past and most likely will happen, but nothing guarantees that *your* alt coins will do. That’s where you have to find out and possible convert to better options. Alt coins bring the upside of huge gains but also the downsides of higher risks & more difficult research. Remember, those telling you that alt season will come soon, are exaclty the same ppl that told everyone to buy falling knives through 2022-2023 absolutely killing your average price

Mentions:#BTC#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Sorry but that is a bad take. Live reserves tracking with flows has been mostly implemented after FTX. Ofc knowing what the liabilities are is great, and it is possible to know since CDC is registered in Malta as Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, and has to publish annual financial declarations. I was talking about the run on CDC, which saw 30 percent of their 1:1 customers withdrawn without much hustle. FTX crumbled during a similar run. CDC did pause USDC and USDT withdrawals but during the FTX collapse, but only on SOL and that was a contingent response to uncertain situation and rumours of a hack. All other networks could withdraw USDT and USDC, including on Poly and ETH. You are making assertions and allegations that are completely baseless. With regards to the arena naming rights, the name [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) arena drives traffic to their website and trends online. It is also a gateway for retail, and helps them with brand recognition. Good deal IMO.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Do not confuse asset prices with how well the average joe is doing. Do you think the DAX (German market index) cared about that country being in a recession when it made a new ATH this year? No.

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Nope! It's which is why in the UK we've seen a lot of companies remove their services. The well known companies I see on the approves list are: Gemini, bit panda, uphold, crypto.com (their uk company is listed as FORIS DAX), moon pay, etoro, and revolut And I feel I'm stretching the "well known" with that. It might be that some. Companies are trading as other names. Like the foris dax/ crypto.com thing.

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Long term it may be perfectly viable to just focus on Ethereum especially if the legendary Flippening happens. However for now ETH is very highly correlated to BTC, which is the most well known crypto and the first to be created. It is common knowledge that the whole crypto market moves in tandem to BTC’s price movement similar to how global stock markets follow the tune of the US stock market (for now at least). In fact weekly positive correlation of ETH to BTC has increased since 2019 with only some drop in 2021 (but still above +0.50). ETH weekly correlation to BTC 2019: +0.75 2020: +0.93 2021: +0.56 2022: +0.98 2023: + 0.95 (until 10 September 2023) ______________________________________ For comparison in 2023 weekly correlation between: Gold and Silver: +0.74 S&P500 vs DAX equity indices: +0.70 EUR vs JPY (against USD): +0.47 My hope for the future is for ETH to further develop and have a lower correlation to BTC, i.e it will move higher due to technological superiority, rather than just pumping for the sake of BTC pumping.

Mentions:#ETH#BTC#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/BitcoinSee Comment

Sigh, absolutely right. The DAX is indeed heavily influenced by the US Stock Market -a German

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoMarketsSee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Well technically ( 🤓 ) the way financial world works is Charts move 6-8 months ahead ( speculative perspective ) so the rally from January could’ve been the speculative buy of all this leading to the 30-31k price range when news arrived. Is why stock markets also hit highs during biggest fear of recession and German DAX index **even hit ATH during confirmed recession** lol

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

>SAP, a leading software company, is currently testing the use of USD Coin (USDC) to provide convenience for users in international payments. In a recent blog post on its official website, **SAP highlighted the drawbacks of current international payment methods, emphasizing their high costs and slow processing times.** The company believes that these challenges can be overcome by leveraging blockchain technology. SAP is huge (has the biggest market cap of all 40 DAX companies in Germany). Love to see this + they picked USDC instead of Tether. Bravo.

Mentions:#USDC#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Yes, SAP has the biggest market cap of all 40 DAX companies. Bigger than Siemens, Porsche, BMW, Airbus etc.

Mentions:#DAX#BMW
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) pro-argument written by IAmGiff. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is a Crypto.com(CRO) con-argument written by IAmGiff. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? Check out the [Cointest archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find submissions for other topics.

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Q4 2022 & Q1 2023 with negative growth. 2 quarters of a shrinking GDP are commonly used as definition of a recession. Thankfully things are looking better for Q2 of this year, which is why the DAX is not particularly weak rn.

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

but i thought DAX hit ATH?

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

German DAX hits new record today!

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

tldr; Macro economist Henrik Zeberg says that the stock market is likely en route to one of its biggest crashes in history. He predicts a massive blow-off top rally for equities in the coming months. The DAX just had its highest close ever for a monthly candle. Bitcoin could dip to as low as $25,200. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.*

Mentions:#DAX#DYOR
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by IAmGiff which won 2nd place in the Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 2nd - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife6e/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_conarguments_february/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12z0hiz/daily_general_discussion_april_26_2023_gmt0/).

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Inflation = good for BTC | commodities The fact some EU stock index such as DAX are almost at ATH as a result of inflation says a lot. 69k is more likely than 12k

Mentions:#BTC#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

Fast facts > Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, rose 0.03% to US$22,401 at 4 p.m. in Hong Kong on Monday, after losing 4.42% in the past seven days. Ether dropped 0.46% to US$1,561 and has lost 4.54% on the week, according to CoinMarketCap data. XRP was the biggest loser among top 10 cryptos, dropping 2.71% to US$0.3633, with weekly losses of 3.2%. San Francisco-based Ripple, the crypto payment network powered by XRP, said last week that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision was in support of its ongoing tussle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Solana’s native token fell 2.48% in the last 24 hours to US$20.78. Sol is down 9.35% on the weekly chart, after facing an 18-hour network outage on Feb. 25. The global crypto market cap dropped 0.39% to US$1.02 trillion, while the total crypto market volume slipped 1.68% in the last 24 hours to US$29.52 billion. Asian equity markets were mixed on Monday after China announced a modest economic growth target of 5% in 2023 – one of its lowest targets in decades. Investors are turning to Chinese trade and inflation data due for release this week, economic data from the U.S. and directions from the Federal Reserve this week on interest rates. The Shanghai Composite lost 0.19% on Monday while the Shenzhen Component Index slipped 0.08%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index ended the day 0.17% higher, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 1.11%. European stocks rose on Monday, after having the best weekly performance since the start of 2023. The STOXX 600 rose 0.26% and Germany’s DAX 40 gained 0.58%, both reaching their highest level since February 2022. The EU50, the benchmark index for the Euro area, also gained 13.77% since the beginning of the year. Eurozone retail trade data will be released later today. European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane will also speak about the bank’s monetary policy tightening.

Mentions:#XRP#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

DAX index (German stock exchange) dropped 100 points from 1200 Hours.

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

I have invested into one that is quite big at the moment. Don't know if it has been done before but either way - awesome investment. 1100% in 14 months by consistency. No big or risky trades just steadily 0,5%-1% each day with close stop losses. Only doing DAX40 trades. Mainly trading opening hours retracements and being very successful. 7000 investors so far - 24 million invested. So seems to be trustworthy. I have been invested 5 months and already got out my initial investment + some profits and am again and twice my investment.

Mentions:#DAX
r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by IAmGiff which won 2nd place in the Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife6e/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_conarguments_february/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/10szhfn/daily_general_discussion_february_4_2023_gmt0/).

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by IAmGiff which won 2nd place in the Crypto.com(CRO) Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. > Let’s dive into CRO's negatives (here’s my [related take on the pros](https://np.reddit.com/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/hvb6h1j/?context=3)). > > **Centralization** > > I began my post on the pros by noting the fate of CRO is obviously inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited, founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives would drive adoption of the coin. The flipside of this is failures and missteps of the company would drag down CRO. > > The company has taken steps to decentralize the actual validators of their chain, but there’s really no question the company’s actions could hurt the coin. With that in mind: > > **Security Concerns** > > Obviously the biggest risk to *any exchange* is getting Mt. Goxed. > > Crypto.com seems to work hard on its security but, still, the company very recently had a hack that [stole 4,600 ETH](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/19/cryptocom-ceo-acknowledges-400-customer-accounts-were-hacked/) and some BTC. Although customers were kept whole, it was a pretty bad breach as hackers somehow circumvented a 2FA system. They've since taken steps to improve security, added whitelisting, and are rolling out a new account protection program (with apologies to Cardi B, the unfortunately named [WAPP](https://blog.crypto.com/crypto-com-security-report-next-steps)). > > Look, security-by-obscurity can be a valid idea, but the company hasn’t been completely transparent about how the hack occurred. This type of thing can still be a risk. > > **Poor Customer Service** > > If you spend any time on the crypto.com sub you will see two main things. 1) People excitedly posting photos when their card arrives (bullish!) but 2) people angrily posting customer service complaints including loooong delays getting their cards (bearish). Even the biggest fans have to admit many people find the customer service experience to be very frustrating and inconsistent right now. While there’s a viewpoint that it’s just growing pains, it’s really not a good excuse. If you’re going nuts on marketing, and asking people to invest $4K or $40K for a card (!) you need to invest in customer support that can keep up or you risking driving away customers for good. > > **Opaque Fees** > > The fees are a common/fair complaint. The app takes a spread that's 1) non-transparent 2) variable 3) difficult to calculate on your own and 4) in some reported instances, apparently quite high. Someone using the app to regularly trade crypto could lose lots of profits to these fees. I don’t use Robinhood but understand it has a similar invisible spread and while people initially loved it, and some mistakenly believed they were buying with no fees, over time people wised up and become more aware of this losing proposition with Robinhood. I feel like everyone hates Robinhood now. There’s certainly a possibility that ultimately customers would rather just see exactly what they’re taking as spread, and that hiding it from your customer is a bad practice that will catch up with you. > > **Product Limitations** > > New customers frequently don’t realize limitations of the products. Sometimes they didn't read the materials, yes. But sometimes it's complicated or unexpected. > > For example, you cannot load money on the pre-paid debit card and turnaround and use it to buy crypto on crypto.com. It’s a silly idea to load money onto CDC, offload money from CDC to the card, and then try to buy back onto CDC. (Just load the money onto CDC and buy crypto, without the extra steps, obviously) But there’s no denying it makes people incredibly mad when they learn they can’t do this. Relatedly, once you’ve loaded the card, there’s no easy way to unload. Sometimes this is just bad planning, but sometimes people loaded the card for a large purchase, found they were unable to make the purchase, and then had no way to get funds back. > > A standard feature of pre-paid cards is you can’t earn rewards on every category of purchase. Also, though true of all pre-paid debit cards, you have to load then spend, rather than spend then payoff later like a credit card. A lot of people would prefer a credit card. > > Due to regulatory constraints, not all of this can be fixed. But the company could fix some and certainly do more to warn people. In the meantime, some people get driven away. > > **Switcheroo Risk** > > If you’ve been following CRO for long you’ll know the company was once known as Monaco, and its currency was MCO. Then it bought the crypto.com domain, launched CRO and eventually retired MCO in favor of CRO. There’s a fair [discussion of what went down here](https://zeroverge.com/crypto-com-has-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-mco-to-cro-swap-83c33f66633d). MCO holders had a window to exchange their MCO for CRO (in hindsight it was a sound move to do so) but there were a lot of questions at the time about fairness. Many people felt like the whole thing was a switcheroo. > > Despite this transition ending up fairly successful by many measures, a lot of people have speculated that the company could someday dump CRO in favor of something new, and there’s no guarantee it would work out as well next time. > > **Too-Good-To-Be-True APYs** > > There’s good reason to believe 10%+ interest rates won't be sustainable indefinitely. But who really knows because there’s limited information available about how the company is paying such high rates. Is the company recycling trading fees to prop up APYs? Is it spending its treasury to do it? I’ve never seen clear answers. > > The company has disclosed it has a CRO supply for the purpose of subsidizing validator rewards, with the goal of decentralizing their chain. Is it also using these funds to prop up Crypto Earn rates? What happens when that war chest runs out? Is it a temporary promo rate? What happens if the system turns out not to work the way people thought? > > A lot of people believe they’re just giving users a higher cut of borrowing than banks do. But I don’t think the company has actually claimed this. And the math for this claim doesn’t really add up because lending rates aren't that high. You can’t pay 12% interest to depositors (under this explanation) if you’re not lending to someone else at 12+%. > > If anyone has seen a detailed accounting of any of this, I'd love to review it. > > **Leadership** > > For the sake of completeness, I’ll note some people have concerns about the past activities of senior leadership. You can [read this](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cryptocom-ceo-kris-marszalek-had-messy-past-before-staples-center-renaming) and make your own decision. I personally think the story is overblown. > > **Limited US Functionality** > > The lack of a US exchange is a big limitation. Everyone knows this. Also, if you’re just on the app the research tools are incredibly limited. You can only see 6-months of charts, there’s virtually no information about what you’re buying, you’re vulnerable to the fees above etc. A lot of people (Rich Boomers, elder millennials, etc.) just aren't ready to trust meaningful funds to something that's a limited app. > > **Chintzy Missions** > > This might seem minor, but some people hate “Mystery Boxes” in the app. It’s a little gamification, but the rewards are so low (most boxes earn the equivalent of finding a dime or two in your couch) that many people would rather have nothing than get small amounts of free CRO. You can be the judge of the logic there, but there’s no question people get mad about it. The Mystery Boxes do seem to incentivize some people to make purchases they would not otherwise make in order to collect boxes. > > *Ultimately, the bottom line to all this: CRO will suffer if crypto.com alienates its customers.* > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. Despite the cons, I’m personally bullish on CRO but I never want to be blind to the risks of an investment, so I thought hard about this. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife6e/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_conarguments_february/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/10s57jv/daily_general_discussion_february_3_2023_gmt0/).

r/CryptoCurrencySee Comment

#Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments Below is an argument written by IAmGiff which won 1st place in the Crypto.com(CRO) Pro-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. > CRO or Crypto.com coin is the native currency of the Crypto.com app, exchange and blockchain. At time of writing, it’s [\#17 by market cap](https://coinmarketcap.com/). > > To begin, the coin is inextricably linked to the fate of the parent company (which is officially named Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited and was founded in 2016). The coin’s primary purpose is to support the company’s various initiatives, and the success of those initiatives is what would drive adoption of the coin. For the purposes of pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessary to make sharp distinctions between the coin and the company. > > **Pros** > > I’ll start with three priority areas outlined in their whitepaper: payments, trading and financial services. In [their own words](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf): *“Our strategy is to leverage* ***payment solutions as the primary tool for driving adoption and user acquisition****, while building* ***trading and financial services solutions as the major sources of revenue****.”* > > **Real-world payments** > > The company has two major crypto-related payment initiatives. One is a Venmo-like **Crypto.Com Pay** feature. For merchants, the payment system offers lower transaction costs than typical interchange fees and instant settlement. For consumers, there’s a strong “cashback” program. (Despite the potential, it’s unclear how much uptake there is at this point.) > > The **Visa pre-paid debit cards** are becoming fairly ubiquitous. In the U.S., these are issued by Metropolitan Commercial Bank (a New York State chartered bank & member FDIC). They offer some of the best rewards of any card on the market. There’s a tier system, progressively requiring higher investments in CRO to get to higher tiers, that people seem to find motivating. Many people love the design. There’s lots of information about how they work so I won’t repeat it here. Key point is they're indeed popular. > > The most important point (that’s often oddly missed in this discussion) is the cards give you a fast and efficient crypto offramp. Some cryptos can be loaded directly onto the card. Others you have to take the 3-second step of converting to USD or a stablecoin and then loading the card. Either way, you can start with crypto and buy almost anything IRL in a few seconds. > > **Trading** > > In many countries, crypto.com is a full-service **exchange**. In the US (where I’m based) it’s only an app for now although there are plans to open a full exchange eventually. The exchange is ranked #9 by [Coinmarketcap](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/) although it’s ranked as high as #4 by [Coingecko’s methodology](https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges). Recently their spot market volumes are about 20-25% those of Binance but about 80-90% those of Coinbase. (They are a smaller player for now in derivatives, although that could change if they were able to tap the US market.) They support slightly more cryptos than Coinbase, although nowhere near as many as Binance. The fees are apparently cheaper if paid in CRO, which is a driver of utilization. I can't try it out yet myself. > > The **app** is a limited experience but easy to use. If you set-up an ACH push to fund your account there’s no fee to load money onto the app, and card fees are also waived for your first month. Long enough to get many new users hooked. (Although it appears there’s no fees to buying the crypto, there’s in fact an opaque and variable spread fee; more on this in my cons post). If you’re just trying to buy and hodl crypto on an exchange, spread won’t kill you. If you want a gentle introduction to buying your first $100 of Bitcoin, this will work well enough. At the moment I just checked, you’d get $99.6 of Bitcoin for your $100, so that's 0.4% in spread. > > **Financial Services** > > Their **Crypto Earn** and **DeFi wallet** programs are attractive for new crypto users, and allow users to progressively pursue more complicated investing strategies. Crypto Earn is the custodial option on the app, which offers a simple way to earn fairly high interest rates on many coins. > > Their DeFi wallet is a more advanced non-custodial option, with the ability to contribute to CRO validator’s staking, or to participate in liquidity pools. (There’s also a lending program but I’m not familiar with it.) > > ***In sum***, the crypto.com financial ecosystem is not 100% there yet (especially with no US exchange), but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a full-service crypto-based financial services provider, and you can imagine a not-too-distant future where, for some people, the company’s offerings would be complete enough that you could ditch your bank entirely without jumping through enormous hoops. In this world, of course, there’s lots of reasons people will be buying CRO. > > **Marketing** > > Many people are very hyped that Crypto.com does a lot of marketing which should benefit CRO and perhaps cryptocurrency in general. You may have heard there's a Matt Damon commercial and a basketball arena in LA. I'm aware Cointest rules say not to focus on marketing, so I'll just make a quick observation. I’ve seen some people say, “oh this is just hype etc.” but if you look at the traditional asset management space, Charles Schwab has a market capitalization of like $170 billion and the primary differentiator between it and other asset managers is really just that Charles Schwab carpetbombs the airwaves with marketing. Marketing does matter in consumer financial services. > > Cointest rules say not to base arguments on price either (Charles Schwab's market cap is NOT a price prediction btw, sorry y'all!) but it’s also relevant to briefly note here that CRO’s marketcap is about 1/6th of BNB’s, so many people believe there’s still upside to this set of observations. > > **Regulation & Security** > > Crypto.com advertises that it works hard to comply with regulation. As a publicly-traded company, so does Coinbase, of course, but the regulatory-compliant approach is quite a contrast to Binance, for example. [Crypto.com](https://Crypto.com) claims to be the first crypto company to have various levels of ISO compliance, [https://crypto.com/images/crypto\_com\_whitepaper.pdf](https://crypto.com/images/crypto_com_whitepaper.pdf), etc. Philosophical arguments about regulation aside, the relevance to CRO is I think it’s fair to say these efforts at compliance probably reduce (but don’t eliminate) the risk of countries swooping in and hammering the exchange or the coin. > > **CRO technical details & tokenomics** > > There were originally 100 billion CRO, but [70 billion were burned](https://blog.crypto.com/70-billion-cro-to-be-burned/). Most people expect the 30 billion supply to continue in the future. There’s currently about 25 billion circulating with the remainder primarily being distributed overtime as validator rewards. These rewards encourage decentralization of the network by giving people an incentive to act as validators. Some people see that as a philosophical plus, but this is still a coin that's very dependent on the company. > > Although the supply is fixed at 30 billion, it’s worth noting that even in the absence of future burns, the supply on the market could fluctuate considerably if the company built up or ran down its holdings. > > Another factor that some consider favorable is that the Visa cards require people to make progressively larger 6-month stakes for higher tier cards (and keep the stakes to retain the card benefits). Therefore, if the number of cardholders increases, an increasing amount of CRO is tied up and unavailable to be dumped. > > CRO successfully migrated from ERC20 to the Crypto.org Chain Mainnet earlier this year. The company has also very recently launched the [Cronos Chain](https://cronos.crypto.org/docs/chain-details/introduction.html) which is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is thus an option for developers to connect Crypto.com users to Ethereum projects and apps and so on. This is interesting to follow, though I think the main reason to invest in CRO for now is if you believe in the company’s vision for executing its financial services offerings. > > **Betting on the sector** > > Finally, there’s a philosophy behind betting on CRO that’s worth mentioning. With apologies to everyone with WAGMI tattoos, there’s over 16,000 cryptos tracked by CoinMarketCap. It’s very difficult to imagine that the majority of these will thrive in the long-term. Some will fade away, new (and often better) ones might arise, etc. > > When you bet on an exchange coin you’re partially placing a bet that demand for buying and trading crypto will continue (at that exchange), but you can be otherwise agnostic on which individual technologies and coins are the best. What’s the best chain for dApps? I have no clue. But I think we’re likely to have dApps in the future and people will want to trade the related currencies and use their crypto. So a nice way to bet on this agnostic view is to invest in exchanges, rather than trying to guess which projects are best. > > **Disclosures:** I’m an Indigo card holder, but don’t hold CRO other than for the stake. I’m personally bullish on cro but I have a lot of cons about it too. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/sife3c/coin_inquiries_cryptocom_proarguments_february/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_crypto.com.28cro.29) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds.