Paul Richardson · Follow
13 min read · Aug 31, 2020
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An overview of the Crypto.com Exchange and its features, including earning CRO at 10% APR and how to borrow fiat using Crypto as collateral
[Article updated on 18th January 2022]
- What the Crypto.com exchange is
- The difference between centralised and decentralised exchanges
- How you can make additional money with associated features on the exchange (staking, Syndicate and Supercharger)
- How good the exchange is for trading and what type of trading is available
- How you can get a cheap loan, using your cryptocurrency as collateral
- Why you can trust Crypto.com with your money
- How you can register an account on the exchange
Exchanges are where you exchange currencies — e.g. from fiat to cryptocurrency (e.g. US Dollar to Bitcoin) or from one cryptocurrency to another (e.g. Bitcoin to Ethereum).
The Crypto.com Exchange is part of a family of products and services offered by Crypto.com. Their mission statement is ‘to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency’ — the Exchange is a key component to enable this, it fits within the ‘Trading’ tower of their 3 verticals:
Crypto.com was founded in 2016. Their Exchange went into public beta in November 2019 and had significant infrastructure upgrades in June 2020. It is now a mature, stable, easy to use product. I have used it myself several times since March 2020 and have not had any issues.
Crypto.com Exchange is a centralised exchange. This means the customer assets (fiat and cryptocurrency) are held by the company themselves (just like traditional banks). All processes are performed centrally, on computer systems that are managed by Crypto.com.
Decentralised exchanges and finance applications (such as Crypto.org DeFi) are available — these are secure, permissionless, open systems where no single entity in in charge and your cryptocurrency can be kept in your personal wallet.
The Crypto.com Exchange has multiple features available, including:
- Spot Trading — coins/tokens
- Margin Trading — open a position that is larger than the balance of your account
- Derivatives Trading — trade the value an asset without trading the underlying asset
- Staking — to earn interest on capital
- Syndicate — discounted token offerings
- Trading Arena — trading battles (competitions)
- Supercharger — a simple liquidity mining platform
- Lending — get an instant loan backed by your crypto
The Crypto.com Exchange lets users trade cryptocurrencies, with the following benefits:
- Deep liquidity, with access to the best execution prices
- Competitive fees, offered with high volume accounts trading for free (after CRO staking discount)
- Engaging events provided, such as discounted token distributions (Syndicate) and trading activity-driven competitions (Trading Arena)
- Institutional-grade infrastructure that powers high-availability, fully resilient and horizontally-scalable components
Spot Trading
Crypto.com Exchange supports trading pairs for cryptocurrencies with leading market capitalization and volume such as BTC, ETH, LTC, USDC and more, as well as CRO token — the native currency of Crypto.org Chain.
Trading can take place via a web interface, or via an API.
The fees on the Exchange are based on trading volume and CRO staking. The higher the volume and/or the higher the amount of CRO staked, the lower the trading fees. In addition, users enjoy trading fee discounts if they pay the fees in CRO. View the detailed fees and limits schedule.
As you can see from the screenshot below, the planning and trading screen is provided by TradingView. I like TradingView and use them independently. It has all the charting tools you need to view history, trends and make predictions.
Margin Trading
Margin trading on the Crypto.com Exchange allows you to borrow cryptocurrencies on Crypto.com Exchange to trade on the spot market. Eligible users can use the margin loan as leverage to open a position that is larger than the balance of your account.
Derivatives Trading
The first derivatives product offered on Crypto.com Exchange is perpetuals. Perpetuals enable traders to buy or sell the value of their ‘assets’, whereby the underlying asset itself is never traded — allowing them to better manage risk. Perpetuals do not expire or have a settlement date, and users can hold their positions for as long as needed.
Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of rules that describe how two applications interact with each other.
For cryptocurrency trading, an API allows you to connect with your exchange, giving you access to real time market data, to make trades, and manage your account.
View the Crypto.com API documentation for more information.
The number of supported coins for trading is impressive, particularly since the second half of 2020 as they are adding several new coins (trading pairs) a week.
A full list of crypto markets and trading pairs is shown on the Markets page.
On Crypto.com Exchange you can earn interest on your capital from two types of staking services:
- Soft-staking for idle balance
- CRO stake-and-earn
Soft Staking
The Crypto.com Exchange supports Soft Staking of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.
Soft staking is a feature that allows you to gain interest on your capital. It is a feature that you need to opt into (it’s very easy to do so). Some religions (including Muslim — Shaira law, Halal, Haram) do not allow people to earn interest, so they can leave this disabled, whilst still using the other features of the Exchange.
Once enabled, Soft staking is initiated automatically when you hold at least the minimum requirement of a particular coin in the Exchange. You then earn interest (paid weekly) and you can withdraw your currency (capital and interest) at any time.
I like how Cryptocurrency that is in pending orders is included in soft staking.
Check out their soft staking FAQ for full details, including available tokens and interest rates.
Hard Staking — CRO 180 Days
In the Exchange, CRO can be staked at 10% p.a. for 180 days. Note:
- The interest is paid daily
- You can add more CRO to the stake, but when you do; the 180 day counter resets
- You can only have one 180 day CRO stake running at a time, you can’t have 2 or more running in parallel
This is the highest rate you can get using centralised services. You can earn 13% (at 29th November 2021) using Crypto.org DeFi.
Earn In App
This is in the Crypto.com App, not in the Exchange; but it makes sense to mention it here.
Earn needs to be implemented manually. You get a higher interest rate the longer your deposit — which can be 1 day, 1 month or 3 months. Interest is paid weekly. You can hold as many Earn ‘buckets’ as you want, so you could for example initiate a new deposit of BTC every month, thereby having 3x 3 month deposits in progress at the same time. This will allow you to compound the interest you’re getting on a regular basis.
Staking with Crypto.com Pre-Paid Visa Debit Cards
The Jade Green / Royal Indigo and higher tiers of Crypto.com Visa Debit cards provide interest, paid weekly:
- Jade Green / Royal Indigo = 10% p.a.
- Icy White / Frosted Rose Gold / Obsidian= 12% p.a., plus an additional 2% p.a. interest on hard staking
- Obsidian = 12% p.a., plus an additional 2% p.a. interest on hard staking
I stake my CRO in Crypto.org DeFi with my Ledger Nano X hardware wallet, as this combination offers the highest reward and security.
I deposit other cryptocurrencies (such as ADA) in Crypto.com Earn, within the app.
The Syndicate is a discounted token offering platform on the Crypto.com Exchange.
It helps projects raise awareness and drive user education. The listing project can provide an allocation of their own token for distribution on the Crypto.com Exchange users with up to a 50% discount. All proceeds from the sale are passed back to the projects. CRO holders receive priority token allocation for these events.
The Syndicate is a feature where Crypto.com sell cryptocurrencies, often at 50% of their current value.
Full information on The Syndicate process is described in their FAQ.
To participate in these events, you need to:
- Stake at least 5,000 CRO in the Crypto.com Exchange account
- Trade the minimum volume required at your CRO staked level on the Crypto.com Exchange in the past 30 days
- Use CRO to subscribe at a 50% discount during the subscription period
- Not be a citizen and resident of the United States, China, or Hong Kong
Because The Syndicate events are always heavily oversubscribed, it is only worthwhile participating if you can stake a decent amount of CRO.
One thing I like about the Syndicates that that you can opt into one, then when it is active, you will be given personalised information on how much of the target Cryptocurrency you can purchase (as this varies based on the number of subscribers to each Syndicate). You can then choose to proceed or back out, there are no penalties if you back out. This means you can opt into Syndicates, review the offer to determine if it will be worthwhile, then proceed or backout as preferred.
The Trading Arena page details ‘trading battles’. These are competitions where prizes (money, Tesla Model 3, etc.) are awarded to people based on defined conditions, such as the trader who trades the most of a particular cryptocurrency during a defined period, or the first 1,000 traders to trade on the Exchange via the API.
The Supercharger is a simple, flexible and secure liquidity mining platform that allows users to deposit tokens (with the option to withdraw at any time) in order to mine the most popular DeFi tokens on the Crypto.com Exchange.
How does Supercharger Work?
Multiple deposits are allowed per user. Minimum 100 CRO per deposit
Once the Charging Period for the event is over, receive rewards (evenly distributed over 30 days) based on your liquidity score.
A. CHARGING PERIOD
- Duration: 45 days
- Deposit Minimum: 100 CRO per deposit
- Deposit & Withdrawal limits: Unlimited
- Deposit from: Crypto.com Exchange spot wallet
B. REWARD PERIOD
- Duration: 45 days (after Charging Period ends)
- Total Reward amount: Pro-rata based on user’s share of total liquidity pool
- Reward distribution frequency: Daily
- Reward amount daily: Total reward divided by 45
- Distributed to: Crypto.com Exchange spot wallet
Are the Supercharge Events worth it for you?
You can see the estimated APY of previous and upcoming Supercharger events.
Whether they are right for you is a personal choice based on:
- Do you want the coin being offered?
- Do you think the APY is worth it (you can usually get a higher CRO APY in DeFi)
- What do you think the value of the coin being offered will be at the end of the Supercharger event (90 days after is starts)?
Examples of Past Supercharger Events
See the Supercharger page for a current list.
This table (full details on the Crypto.com FAQ page) shows the realised benefits and rewards that you will receive when you stake certain amounts of CRO.
Additional discounts in the form of CRO rebates are available on the Exchange’s trading fees. The Stake-to-Take program, offers negative trading fees for retail CRO stakers in the VIP 1 trading tier.
- Retail users can earn up to 0.10% on taker fees when they trade on the Exchange. Additional trading discounts in the form of rebates increases with CRO amount staked, and fees must be paid in CRO to be eligible
- The minimum staking requirement has been reduced by 50% to 5,000 CRO for both individual and institutional customers to be eligible for additional trading discounts (from 10% — 100%)
Case Example 1 (Retail):
- Your trading tier is VIP 1 and have staked 15,000 CRO
- Maker fees paid in CRO for the previous day is 300 CRO
- Taker fees paid in CRO for the previous day is 350 CRO
As a result, you will get 410.035 CRO in rebates distributed to your CRO wallet the next day (410.035 = (300*20%) + (350*100.01%)).
Case Example 2 (Retail):
- Your trading tier is VIP 3 and have staked 5,000 CRO
- Maker fees paid in CRO for the previous day is 100 CRO
- Taker fees paid in CRO for the previous day is 500 CRO
As a result, you will not be eligible for negative taker fees due to the trading tier. However, you will get 510 in CRO rebates distributed to your CRO wallet the next day (510 = (100*10%) + (500*100%))
The Crypto.com Lending service allows you to get a loan, using your staked Cryptocurrency as collateral.
This is a good feature if you want to keep your Crypto invested and release some currency.
You might want to do this if:
- You have a belief that the Crypto you have invested is due to increase in value
- For tax reasons you don’t want to exchange one currency for another
The lending feature has these benefits:
- Low-cost borrowing
- Get a loan instantly
- No credit checks
- Repay your loan partially or in full at any time within 12 months
Institutional Users
If you are an institutional user and require more flexible loan terms, you can apply for Lending Pro on Crypto.com Lending. Once your application has been approved, you can enjoy a higher borrowing limit and apply for loans with customised terms when they are available.
Transferring currency between the Crypto.com Exchange and App is instant and free. Transferring money (fiat or cryptocurrency) to/from the Exchange is also a very easy and secure process.
The charting and trading screen is based on TradingView, which provides basic functionality and will be familiar to many people, as many exchanges use the TradingView platform.
The Crypto.com security page provides information on their security practices, including:
- How their funds are stored and insured
- Infrastructure security
- Internal controls
- Application security
- User authentication
- Withdrawal protection
- Certifications and Assessments (1)
- Penetration Testing and Bug Bounty (2)
- Crypto.com have gained multiple industry standard certifications and assessments. This includes being audited by 3rd parties for compliance to risk management, identity management, etc.
- Crypto.com use the hackerone website to provide bounties to people who identify and report bugs, on their live and publicly available test services. It’s good to see them do this, as it shows that they are keen to let the public help identify potential issues and reward them for it
The Crypto.com Exchange platform essentially provides 3 sets of functionality:
- The ability to exchange cryptocurrency/fiat/tokens using different methods
- Borrowing — get an instant loan backed by your crypto
- Staking capital for interest
As the trading platform is based on TradingView, the user interface and basic functionality is clear, easy to use and will be familiar to many people. The prices, spread and volume offered are all good.
The CRO staking of 10% pa at 180 days is good for people looking for a good fixed rate of interest over a long period.
The certification, assessments and hackerone involvement that Crypto.com have, show that they are serious about security, demonstrating that they are a company that want to earn trust from their users, as well as 3rd parties, so they can provide additional functionality. Other companies (such as Binance) have really struggled with regulatory policy and have had to withdraw services from Europe because of this.
They continue to add new features to the Exchange, their rate of progress and quality of services has been very high.
I continue to be impressed with everything they do and I am firmly locked in as a loyal customer.
If you register for the Crypto.com Exchange with my referral link, you will get:
- $10 if you stake at least 1,000 CRO
- $50 if you stake at least 5,000 CRO
Recommended Services
- Sign up to Curve and get £5
- Sign up to Crypto.com with referral code qu80wtyk0i This can be used within 5 days from having your account KYC approved. Get $25 when you stake for a card
- Sign up to the Crypto.com Exchange with referral code qu80wtyk0i, you will get $10 if you stake at least 1,000 CRO and $50 if you stake at least 5,000 CRO
My Articles
- The Essential Guide to the Visa Debit Card from Crypto.com
- Curve adds Security, Functionality and Rewards to your Existing Debit and Credit Cards
- The Essential Guide to Maximising CRO Investment with Crypto.org DeFi
- The Essential Guide to Farming, Harvesting and Mining Cryptocurrencies
- This is why I’m Massively Excited for the Growth of Crypto.com
- The Essential Guide to Discounted Gift Cards with Crypto.com Pay
- The Essential Guide to Generating Some Money the Easy Way, Guaranteed
- The Essential Guide to Saving Money and Building Wealth in the UK
- 5 UK Debit/Credit Card Purchase Passive Reward Schemes — No Investment Needed
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