Crypto.com is everywhere. The company's name is plastered over the home stadium of the Los Angeles Lakers, perhaps the most famous NBA franchise. It also sponsors Formula One races and UFC fights. Its ads are back on the radio, with Eminem declaring “fortune favors the brave” during the NBA playoffs.
Crypto.com is nowhere to be found either. It doesn't have a flashy CEO like FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried (currently in prison) or Binance's CZ (also jailed), and unlike Coinbase, regulators don't seem to be sniffing around. Sure, the company does some attention-grabbing marketing, but on a day-to-day basis, Crypto.com barely makes headlines.
Crypto.com is one of those things I've long included in my “what the heck” column, along with JoJo Siwa, bird flu, and the difference between F1 and NASCAR. You'll see the name somewhere whenever you watch a sporting event, but you rarely ever chat with someone who uses the site or see it in a headline. Part of the problem is that I live in New York, where their service is not allowed (this is not an indictment on the company; for many cryptocurrency exchanges, the Empire State is a tough opponent), but the company also has a pretty nebulous presence in the US market. The company claims 100 million users worldwide, but it doesn't seem to have gotten much attention yet.
Often, when you mention Crypto.com to people working in the cryptocurrency industry, they say, of course they know about it. When you ask them what they know specifically, the answer is rarely clear. They speculate that it's mainly popular overseas, or maybe just for beginners. Google data shows that a significant portion of search interest comes from the US, but there's more interest from outside the US, including Singapore, Nigeria, and Bulgaria.
“Hmm, looks like it’s bigger than I thought,” one crypto evangelist commented after looking at the trading volumes.
“You own the Lakers arena? I've always wondered how that happened,” said another crypto entrepreneur. (To be fair, the company doesn't own the arena, it just bought the naming rights.) He set up a Crypto.com account during the 2021-2022 market cycle to do certain operations that weren't allowed on Coinbase at the time, but hasn't actually used it since.
“It's certainly mysterious,” Castle Island Ventures general partner Nick Carter told me in an email when I asked him about the company, adding that he, like me, doesn't know anyone who uses it. “But I think this reflects the user base — not necessarily crypto-natives, but rather retailers looking for a casual, accessible experience (as I understand it),” he said.
Crypto.com is positioning itself as the new face of cryptocurrency, despite being faceless itself. It could be a smart move, as it avoids much of the scrutiny that other exchanges have faced while building its own brand and therefore its customer base. For now, Crypto.com is striking a balance between name recognition and infamy, treading quietly but with a big advertising budget.
Crypto.com has only appeared on the US market in the last four years or so, but it's been around for a while longer. Originally called Monaco, the exchange was founded in 2016 in Hong Kong by Krys Marszalek, a Polish-born entrepreneur with a flamboyant career, and a few others. At the height of the cryptocurrency boom in 2017, the company raised funds from the public through an initial coin offering, similar to a stock market IPO, in which investors minted and sold their own digital tokens. In 2018, the company purchased the coveted Crypto.com domain name for an undisclosed sum from an academic who had long refused to sell it. (To make things even more confusing, Crypto.com is technically run by Foris DAX Asia, which a search on Reddit suggests could confuse many users when their tax documents arrive. This is also the name Crypto.com uses for lobbying purposes.) Crypto.com's primary business is as a cryptocurrency exchange, acting as an intermediary for the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, but it also offers other products, such as a cryptocurrency Visa card.
The 2021-2022 market cycle is when Crypto.com, now headquartered in Singapore, made a lot of headlines. In late 2021, the company purchased the naming rights to what was then the Staples Center in Los Angeles as part of a 20-year, $700 million deal. The company also inked sponsorship deals with UFC and F1, and initially ran a “fortune favors the brave” ad campaign featuring Matt Damon. Crypto.com wanted brand recognition, and it was willing to spend millions to get it.
“This is another brick in a larger effort to introduce Crypto.com as a brand to the world and communicate our core values,” Crypto.com's chief marketing officer, Steven Kalifowitz, told Business Insider at the time.
It turns out that many of the mini-emperors in the crypt are not wearing any clothes.
In that moment, it all made sense. FTX was on a roll, paying $135 million to have its name inscribed on the Miami Heat's stadium. Founder SBF was romping around in the Bahamas with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and hinting at spending $1 billion on the 2024 election. Binance's CZ was talking to Forbes about investing $200 million, saying it would encourage media companies to adopt crypto and decentralize the industry. But we know how the story ends: FTX collapsed along with other high-profile crypto projects, and crypto winter arrived. Many of the crypto mini-emperors turned out to be naked.
However, Crypto.com managed to weather the crisis, even if not perfectly. The company mistakenly transferred about $400 million to another account in November 2022, causing some users to withdraw funds from the platform. The company laid off 20% of its employees in early 2023, citing economic headwinds and the collapse of FTX. The Financial Times reported in June last year that US regulators had issued harsh punishments to Binance, even though Crypto.com maintained that it was fine, as it ran its own trading team in-house. The US regulatory environment seemed to have made the company a bit uneasy, leading it to close its US institutional exchange in the middle of last year.
In the U.S., Crypto.com has largely avoided the hits its competitors have faced (though not in other countries, such as the Netherlands, where it was fined for operating without registration). The Securities and Exchange Commission has gone after Coinbase and Kraken for operating securities exchanges without registration, but has said nothing about Crypto.com. Crypto.com has so far managed to avoid the spotlight, despite employing many of the same tactics. In an interview with Decrypt in April, the company's chief operating officer acknowledged that its big-budget marketing efforts could make it a target, but said the trade-off was worth it.
Crypto.com is determined to move forward, loudly and quietly, to capitalize on the market's recent rally. Bitcoin is on the rise again, and so is Crypto.com. The company is hiring again, advertising aggressively again and boasting about its business prospects. CEO Marszalek told Bloomberg in April that the company aims to triple its number of registered users.
According to data from marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, digital spending by crypto advertisers in the U.S. grew 185% year-over-year in Q1 2024. During the same period, Crypto.com spent eight times as much as Coinbase on digital ads. (It's worth noting that in Q1 2022, Crypto.com actually slightly outspent FTX on digital ads.)
But all of Crypto.com's ad spend doesn't seem to be making much difference. According to data compiled by CCData, Crypto.com commands 2.3% of global spot market trading volume, roughly half of Coinbase's 4% and just ahead of Kraken's 1.4% (Binance still dominates globally). Sensor Tower found that Crypto.com saw a 140% increase in month-over-month downloads in March, just behind Coinbase's 160% increase.
The act of buying and renaming a stadium is seen as a bit of a bummer by most in the cryptocurrency industry.
Crypto.com did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment on the matter, and most people I spoke to when asked what they thought of the company were met with what could be described as a shrug.
One crypto executive said part of the problem is that Crypto.com is an Asian startup, somewhat outside of the mainstream Silicon Valley crypto world. The Coinbase gang is dominating the crypto world in the 2020s, much like the “PayPal Mafia” gang that dominated the software industry in the 2010s. The executive also wasn't too keen on Crypto.com's flashy advertising, calling it “decadent” and irresponsible.
“Buying and renaming stadiums is just viewed as lame by most in the crypto industry,” they say. “We think the most vulgar and frankly irresponsible thing to do is run a FOMO ad. 'Buy crypto or you'll be left behind' is a really irresponsible message. JP Morgan just won't do that.”
And despite the company's ability to avoid tough regulatory scrutiny, it hasn't won much favor among some crypto evangelicals.
“I support bitcoin, but I think Crypto.com is a huge negative for the American people overall. It's very confusing. It's like a casino,” said Alex Gladstein, who has argued for bitcoin's importance in advancing human rights and freedoms as chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation. “You go to the website and they invite you to bet on a coin that will go to zero. I don't think it has anything to do with helping people become financially independent or building any kind of alternative wealth.”
Indeed, what is true for casinos is also true for most cryptocurrency exchanges, sports betting apps, and many regular trading apps. Crypto.com seems to be cautious about coloring its rules within the regulatory framework. The company's head of legal affairs for the Americas recently published a “Cryptocurrency Legal Handbook,” which is, well, good.
Crypto.com is deeply ingrained in our culture, but it's not. It's kind of like a takeover of FTX's position, but with more anonymity. For the company, this is a very clever operating space; ubiquitous, yet relatively anonymous. For others, the results may vary depending on how you feel about this. This is a good reminder that exchanges, no matter what company they are, should only be used for trading, not storing crypto assets.
Maybe Eminem, like Matt Damon, won't regret being the voice of that ad. Or maybe we'll look back on this moment in five years and say, “Do I remember that cryptocurrency company? Is that where the Lakers are still based? Or is it a different company now?”
Emily Stewart He's a senior correspondent for Business Insider, writing about business and economics.
