Crypto.​com is facing its second regulatory battle in the European Union this year after its Malta-based operator Foris DAX MT was placed on an alert list by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF).

In a filing from November 6, Foris DAX MT is accused of providing financial services in Poland without the necessary authorization.

This allegation comes eight months after the De Nederlandsche Bank — the Dutch central bank — hit the company with a $3.1 million fine over breaches of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws.

A Crypto.com spokesperson told Protos, “We are aware of an update from the KNF in Poland and are working closely with the regulator to resolve any questions they may have regarding our services.”

Read more: Former Crypto.com compliance officer charged with money laundering, extortion

Firms that are placed on a KNF alert list aren’t banned in Poland but their listing serves as a warning to users and potential investors that the company may be engaging in unauthorized financial activities.

Other crypto companies on the list include Bright Space LTD, which uses the website cryptotradecorp.com, and BitBay, which now operates as Zonda and is one of Poland’s biggest exchanges.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Update 18:20 UTC, Nov 7: Updated piece to include comment from Crypto.com spokesperson.

The post Crypto.com added to alert list in Poland months after Dutch bank fine appeared first on Protos.

A former compliance officer at Crypto.com — registered in Malta as Foris Dax MT limited — has been charged with extortion and money laundering after he allegedly threatened to expose sensitive information while demanding compensation from the company. 

Thirty-three-year-old Jose Luis Alonso Melchor was arraigned by magistrate Nadia Vella in a Malta court on Thursday following his arrest and termination from the Singapore-based crypto exchange. 

According to Malta Today, Melchor was fired after Crypto.com discovered he had broken an attachment order. Melchor then allegedly obtained sensitive information from the firm through his compliance officer role and threatened to publish it.

He allegedly told his employer that he wanted €44,000 ($47,666) in compensation for his job loss.

Melchor faces nine charges, including money laundering, extortion in his capacity as a public servant, extorting money by threatening to defame a third party, unauthorized use of his employer’s computer equipment, and the taking, tampering, and disclosing of sensitive data.

A €2 million ($2.2 million) freezing order was upheld against Melchor and his bail requests were denied as the magistrate deemed him a flight risk.

Crypto.com told Protos, “The employee in question was reported to the authorities immediately upon discovery of his actions, and his employment was terminated.

“We continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement and have no further comment as the matter is pending litigation.”

Read more: Scoop: EU officials suspect Binance is faking accounts in Ireland and Malta

It’s unclear what Melchor’s attachment order relates to, but it can involve a judge seizing a defendant’s assets to ensure any potential monetary damages can be paid in full.

Crypto.com, under its Malta registration, was fined €2.85 million ($3.1 million) in March this year by the Dutch Central Bank. Crypto.com had failed to register in the country for two years, breaking money laundering and terrorism financing laws.

The exchange was also made to delist USDT pairs in compliance with Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission regulations in January 2023.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Former Crypto.com compliance officer charged with money laundering, extortion appeared first on Protos.

The Dutch Central Bank revealed today that it hit crypto exchange Crypto.com with a €2.85 million ($3.1 million) fine after failing to register for two years, breaking money laundering and terrorism financing laws.

Crypto.com, registered as Foris DAX MT Limited, was fined by the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) on October 2, 2023, after it failed to register with the bank between May 2020 and November 2022.

This period of non-compliance from Crypto.com was described by the DNB as ‘very severe,’ and led to the bank increasing the fine. The DNB also considered the number of Crypto.com’s customers and its competitive advantage in the country as reasons to impose a larger penalty. 

Crypto firms must register with the DNB under regulations set out in the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act, abbreviated locally as WWFT.

Crypto.com attempted to reduce the fine by arguing the fine should reflect a violation of ‘low severity.’ It argued that the DNB could ‘at most’ fine them for failing to register on time, while claiming Crypto.com followed the objectives of the WWFT, maintained customer due diligence, and reported unusual transactions to Malta’s financial watchdog, the FIAU. 

Read more: Binance execs detained in Nigeria still being questioned over illicit fund flows

Crypto.com to appeal fine

The crypto exchange failed to mitigate the fine as the DNB upheld its decision, claiming Crypto.com “ran an increased risk of becoming involved in money laundering or the financing of terrorism.” It maintained its opinion that Crypto.com’s violations ‘are very serious.’ 

A Crypto.com spokesperson told Protos “We are disappointed and disagree with their (DNB’s) decision to fine Foris DAX MT Ltd and are actively appealing this decision.”

“Moreover, we have already addressed the concerns raised in a timely and transparent manner and received regulatory approval from DNB as a crypto service provider in July last year. We remain fully committed to collaboratively engaging with the DNB, and regulators around the world.”

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Crypto.com fined $3M by Dutch Central Bank over ‘severe’ violations appeared first on Protos.

Dark web users can get their hands on fully verified crypto accounts for as little as $20, according to recent research from online data security provider Privacy Affairs.

As detailed in the firm’s ‘Dark Web Price Index,’ buyers can purchase a level 1 verified account from Estonia-based Paxful for just $20. However, if they want access to the space’s major players, they’ll have to fork out slightly more.

• A verified Blockchain.com account will set you back $85.
• Crypto.com credentials will run a buyer $300.
• A verified Binance account will cost $410.
• An account with US-based Kraken is priced at $1,170.

The most expensive account on offer is from German bank N26 and costs a (relatively) whopping $2,650.

While crypto-related credentials are among the highest-priced info on the dark web menu, the report also includes prices for stolen credit card details, payment processor accounts, forged passports, and hacked social media profiles.

Read more: The deep ties between Binance, Bitzlato, and darknet market Hydra

Kraken account prices have increased four-fold

The prices quoted in the latest Privacy Affairs report, while relatively cheap considering the amount of damage that can be done with such information, are still higher than this time last year.

As reported by Cointelegraph, in 2022, Kraken and Binance accounts cost just $260 and $250 respectively.

The most expensive item on this year’s report overall is ‘premium quality’ malware, priced at $4,500 ($1,800 last year). This has nudged it ahead of last year’s costliest entry, a forged Maltese passport, which now costs $4,000.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

The post Verified Kraken and Binance accounts going cheap on the dark web appeared first on Protos.

With most eyeballs on FTX’s rapid meltdown last week, fears of a Crypto.com insolvency are swirling on the periphery. Some observers fear that Crypto.com or its Cronos (CRO) blockchain system could face similar struggles or financial shortfalls in the wake of the FTX collapse.

The exchange spent exorbitant sums on marketing campaigns earlier this year, including the now-infamous “Fortune Favors the Brave” commercial and the naming rights for the LA Lakers’ basketball stadium. It also advertised nose-bleedingly high interest rates for stakers of its CRO token that earned a rebuttal by investigative and whistleblowing YouTuber Coffeezilla.

Nowadays, it’s backtracking on some of its promises of high staking rewards and perks for locking up its native token, CRO.

Read more: Crypto.com is in big trouble — but the warnings were there

Observers note that the collapse of FTX was mostly due to weaknesses in its native token, FTT. With CRO already down 85% year-to-date, confidence in Crypto.com’s Cronos is nearly declining to the crisis levels that affected FTT.

Reneging on CRO-linked interest rates may have been Crypto.com’s first sign of trouble. An aggregated portfolio of on-chain assets by Nansen suggests that Crypto.com holds just over 30% bitcoin, with the remainder an assortment of altcoins with dubious value, including large stashes of Shiba Inu and Chiliz.

Crypto.com promises audited proof of reserves

The past week’s bad news has forced Crypto.com to offer reassurance about its finances. On November 9, Crypto.com promised to publish audited proof of reserves to dispel rumors of insolvency. CEO Kris Marszalek called the situation “a critical moment for the entire industry” in a tweet thread. 

On November 11, Crypto.com published a blog post stating that it held nearly $3 billion in reserves, including 53,024 BTC and 391,564 ETH. It also published its BTC and ETH/ERC-20 cold wallet addresses, citing transparency. This disclosure is not an audit, however. The exchange expects to publish the fully audited proof of reserves in a few weeks.

Analytics company Nansen.ai backed that initial analysis up by showing that Crypto.com’s digital asset holdings are worth over $2.8 billion.

Read more: Even Matt Damon couldn’t save 2,000 Crypto.com staff

Crypto.com’s race to reassure customers

Disturbingly, on November 9, Crypto.com suspended deposits and withdrawals of USDC and USDT on the Solana blockchain, citing “recent industry events.” Marszalek cited FTX as an important bridge and venue for Solana-based assets. USDT also went through a scary moment of nearly losing its peg to the US dollar around the same time.

Like most digital asset markets, Solana (SOL) had a rough week in the wake of FTX’s collapse. SOL plummeted from a seven-day high of $38.55 on November 5 to $12.62 on November 9. Alameda Research’s nearly $1.2 billion in “unlocked SOL,” “locked SOL,” and “SOL collateral” could have led to worries that it could dump its SOL and Solana-based tokens to save itself. SBF and other FTX investors had repeatedly expressed support for Solana.

On Monday, November 14, Marszalek conducted an ‘ask-me-anything’ interview wherein he assured the public that withdrawals were working, save for three coins — two of them are linked to FTX. “We will prove people wrong,” he stated. “As a company we have 1:1 reserves and a very strong balance sheet.”

Marszalek further disclosed that Crypto.com’s exposure to FTX was now less than $10 million, opposed to the previous $1 billion figure. Most of it has been recovered, the chief exec said.

“We do not lend to third parties, we do not take counterparty risk, we do not even own [Tether],” (our emphasis).

However, Marszalek also confirmed that 20% of Crypto.com’s reserves are in SHIB “because it reflects what customers bought, it’s 1:1.”

Whether or not Crypto.com will get caught up in a domino fall like FTX remains to be seen. However, it has taken some steps to allay criticism, including publishing some slices of information, promising to conduct an audit soon, and taking steps to protect itself from a potential meltdown in Solana-based assets like USDC and USDT.

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post Explained: Crypto.com’s ongoing insolvency battle appeared first on Protos.

While it would be unfair to say that every corporate stadium naming rights partnership precedes an unfortunate event — after all, there are more than 75 professional league stadiums in America — a mythology has been established around such deals and the hubris it takes to see them through.

Even if talk of a naming rights curse is overstating things a little, it has to be said that some of the most high-profile naming deals in recent years have centered around particularly disastrous episodes. Think MCI Center in D.C., Enron Field in Houston, and the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia.

If nothing else, these deals can seemingly provide a handy litmus test before major market downturns.

History rhyming

On April 7, 2000, just one year before journalists and investors began to question its financial statements, Enron purchased 30 years of naming rights for the newly-built Astros stadium in Houston. The price for the rights was $100 million, paid out at just over $3 million a year.

By the end of 2002, Enron was forced by a court order to sell those naming rights back to the Astros for $2.1 million. The Astros were quickly able to find a new buyer, to which the rights still belong, Minute Maid — though Minute Maid was merged into the Coca-Cola Company by 2003.

In what probably felt like déjà vu, just last year, Crypto Dot Com, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, made the decision to buy two decades of naming rights to the formerly named STAPLES Center in Los Angeles.

This decision came at an incredible expense for the start-up: over $700 million, or nearly twice what it cost to construct the STAPLES Center in the first place. The sum was also almost four times what it cost Staples to purchase the original naming rights.

On top of the more than $700 million spent on the arena naming rights, the exchange also inked an “eight-figure deal” to put a patch on the uniforms of the Philadelphia 76ers for six years.

So, what has more than three-quarters of a billion dollars spent on basketball marketing alone gotten the exchange? Not much, from what any outside observer can tell. Crypto Dot Com’s native cryptocurrency, Cronos, is down almost 90% year-over-year. Meanwhile, it’s been widely reported that the company is facing steep layoffs in the face of an industry-wide downturn.

Read more: Crypto.com is in big trouble — but the warnings were there

FTX heating up

The other big swinger in sports marketing over the past couple of years has been FTX, a Bahamas-based crypto exchange with American Sam Bankman-Fried at the helm. FTX purchased naming rights for the former American Airlines Arena in Miami in early 2021, a 19-year deal sealed for $135 million. The Miami Heat now officially play in the FTX Arena.

But this wasn’t the only sports marketing that the exchange took part in. It also sponsored an esports team for over $200 million and has seen its logo plastered on every umpire in Major League Baseball. The price of that deal is undisclosed.

This suggests that FTX spent a half billion dollars or more on sports marketing alone — and odds are they weren’t the most advantageous dollars spent. This year, FTX gave up on an attempted deal with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as crypto winter took its toll.

Meanwhile, for the first time since FTX was founded, people seem to be asking whether or not the exchange and its sister trading firm — Alameda Research — are insolvent.

Best for last

The most egregious example of choosing to spend money on sports marketing as opposed to a functional business has to go to the team formerly in charge of the algorithmic stablecoin pair TERRA/LUNA.

A deal was penned this year with the Washington Nationals for about $40 million, granting naming rights for an exclusive luxury venue for high-end clients, along with seats behind home plate being plastered with ‘TERRA’ for at least one MLB season — possibly many more.

Only months later, the stablecoin pair collapsed into oblivion. Meanwhile, everyone watching a Nationals game has been reminded of the poor deal for the entire season — with empty seats glaring back at viewers during every at-bat.

Read more: Crypto exchange to name NBA stadium in $135M deal, replacing American Airlines

Immersed in the naming rights curse

As the broader economy begins to embrace a recession, cryptocurrency is maintaining lows not seen in years. Is the curse of the stadium naming rights real? Are there more major cryptocurrency bankruptcies in the not-so-distant future? Only time will tell — Crypto Dot Com and FTX hope to buck the trend.

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post Has the naming rights curse finally hit crypto? appeared first on Protos.

Six years after it launched, Crypto.com had confirmed its position alongside the likes of Binance, Coinbase, and FTX as a top 10 spot crypto exchange.

Its distinctive lion-head logo could be seen adorning some of the sporting world’s most iconic venues, and A-list Hollywood stars were appearing in its frankly preposterous Super Bowl ads.

Not to mention, its native Cronos token (CRO) was riding high (eager traders and investors snapped up about $26 million worth of Crypto.com’s original MCO Token in 2017, swapping it for the newly-renamed Cronos in 2020).

Life was pretty good.

Unfortunately, that’s the thing about crypto: it comes at you fast. And Crypto.com has discovered over the past 12 months that throwing money at glitzy PR gimmicks is no substitute for sound fundamentals when crypto winter hits.

With CRO continuing to hemorrhage value, employees leaving the company in droves, and the exchange seemingly running out of money, some are wondering if it will survive the winter.

Of course, it’s not alone in finding things pretty tough over the past year or so, with literally hundreds of tokens, crypto-based businesses, and exchanges struggling when the market plummeted. And, sadly, this means that even more traders and investors lost out when the projects, coins, and companies they placed their faith – and hard-earned cash – into went to the wall.

Now obviously, there’s no such thing as a sure thing when we’re talking crypto. However, there are certain things you can look out for to ensure that, if crypto winter does hit, your investment is best placed to ride it out.

So, here are just a few of the warning signs to look out for to make sure you don’t get stung by the next Crypto.com.

Poor-quality marketing

Much of the recent criticism leveled at Crypto.com surrounds the firm’s marketing, from how much it spent to the ridiculous claims it made.

And this can be a great indicator that not everything is 100% right with a project.

The company’s now-infamous Fortune Favors the Brave commercial was one of the few ads from a digital asset company to air during the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, when you look past the fact that it starred Matt Damon and clearly cost a fortune, it was just not very good. For a start, it equated buying crypto to 18th-century sea voyages and used the phrase “fortune favors the brave” when the famous saying is actually “fortune favors the bold.”

So, Crypto.com obviously had a lot of money but couldn’t produce a coherent script or relevant messaging.

Another thing to look out for is marketing spend. Or, in Crypto.com’s case, a significant cut in marketing spend.

Sure, there was the Super Bowl spot and the $700 million Lakers stadium sponsorship, but as things got rough, it started to back out of sponsorship deals and tone down its ad campaigns. It should be noted that a company scaling back marketing isn’t itself a huge issue — after all, bear markets do happen — but it has to be said that Crypto.com’s scaling back was noticeably severe.

A list of dodgy associates

When choosing where to invest your funds, it’s more than a little wise to check out precisely who the project and its team have associated or worked with.

Sure, this may sound a little snobbish but you know what they say: Lie down with a dog and you get fleas.

A brief delve into Crypto.com’s history shows that the company dropped the ball when it chose the infamous German fraud Wirecard to be its card issuer.

When irregularities in Wirecard’s figures were flagged during an audit in 2019, it was discovered that the company had ‘misplaced’ more than $2 billion.

Despite Crypto.com promising to refund card users who lost money when Wirecard became insolvent, rumors that the two firms shared an exec were more than a little unhelpful. And even though it was just a mix-up caused by two execs having similar last names, it turned out that the Crypto.com exec in question had previously been involved with a number of failed companies in Australia.

Employees jumping ship

Employees leaving a business – whether they’re pushed or they jump – is never a good sign. Again, if you want proof, look no further than Crypto.com.

The company once boasted more than 5,000 employees, however, this was at its 2021 peak. By June this year, it had reportedly slashed its workforce by 2,000 people.

Read more: Even Matt Damon couldn’t save 2,000 Crypto.com staff

A history of failed projects

It may sound simple but a good way to gauge a project’s potential success is to take a look at its track record. Any legal problems? Failed projects? All potential red flags.

The original team behind Crypto.com sold about $26 million worth of the platform’s native token (then called MCO) in 2017. MCO later became CRO and holders were allowed to swap to the new token following the company’s rebrand.

Like Celsius’ CEL token, CRO offered incentives to new users and increased yield to customers who locked it. It also offered loyalty and usage bonuses, including discounts on various services. These bonuses included debit cards with a CRO-based cashback system.

However, this system was only sustainable if people kept joining and locking CRO tokens. Once new sign-ups dried up, the company was forced to slash these rewards and the token’s price plummeted.

What about that screams solid planning?

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post What smart crypto investors can learn from Crypto.com appeared first on Protos.

Crypto.com did its best to buy its way to the top of the crypto industry. Its massive marketing spend, including a slick Super Bowl ad, managed to attract a peak 50 million registered users and by February 2022, it had cemented its position as a top 10 spot crypto exchanges.

Unfortunately, it overextended itself.

Since its glossy Super Bowl spot, executives have laid-off staff for months, and new user onboarding schemes that advertised ultra-high interest rates have collapsed alongside the company’s CRO token that subsidized those schemes. Researchers have also discovered suspicious ties to the fraudulent company, Wirecard.

However, this was far from the only ‘red flag’ that on closer inspection should have pointed to things not being quite right with Crypto.com.

Red flag #1: Dramatic irony at the Super Bowl

Crypto.com became one of a few digital asset companies to have a commercial air during the Super Bowl. Its famous Fortune Favors the Brave commercial featured oscar-winning A-lister Matt Damon. The irony was immediately apparent. 

The point of the commercial — laughable at first — was to equate buying crypto assets such as Crypto.com’s token with early space travel, 18^th century high seas expeditions, or the Wright brothers’ maiden flight.

Moreover, the catchphrase is “fortune favors the bold,” not brave. Pliny the Elder popularized the phrase before sailing toward Mt. Vesuvius where he immediately died amid volcanic shrapnel and sulfurous fumes.

Indeed, it was so bad that South Park satirized the ad for a full TV episode.

The commercial’s dramatic irony provided a clue to viewers about the credibility of the advertiser, namely that, despite millions of dollars in production and broadcast costs, the company couldn’t manage to write an intelligent script.

Red flag #2: Crypto.com slashing headcount

Lay-offs are an obvious sign of corporate trouble. By June 2022, Crypto.com had laid off as many as 2,000 employees from its 2021 peak, according to Ad Age.

For its part, the company rebutted Ad Age’s figure, although it did confirm that its workforce once totaled over 5,000 people, that it had been laying off hundreds of workers, and wouldn’t confirm its total headcount reduction since its peak.

Red flag #3: Slashing marketing spend

Crypto.com spent a lot of money on marketing, including a Super Bowl ad that cost millions. The naming rights for the Los Angeles Lakers’ stadium reportedly cost as much as $700 million across 20 years. That deal earned mixed reactions from basketball fans. One Los Angeles Lakers player said the new name would feel “weird” for a while (the venue had been called the Staples Center since 1999).

The company also backed out of a sponsorship deal with a soccer team, Angel FC, in the same city. It also slashed sponsorship dollars allocated to e-sports streams on Twitch.

The company was also forced to tone down its messaging in ads, including reckless endorsements ruled illegal by the UK Advertising Standards Authority.

Red flag #4: CRO schemes collapse

The original team behind what eventually became Crypto.com issued and sold about $26 million worth of CRO’s predecessor token, MCO, via a traditional ICO in 2017. (MCO holders swapped to CRO during the company’s rebrand in 2020.)

In the years that followed, the company and its various executives and partners sold untold millions more worth of MCO/CRO.

Originally called Crypto.org Coin (flexing its ownership of both .com and .org TLDs), Crypto.com rebranded CRO to “Cronos” in February 2022 — the same month as its Super Bowl ads.

There are several similarities between Crypto.com’s CRO and Celsius’ CEL. Both tokens funded accounts managed by the entities who issued them, subsidizing the operators with extra capital from which they paid monetary incentives to attract new users. Both also increased yield to customers who locked up the token. They also offered loyalty and usage bonuses, including discounts on various services.

In Crypto.com’s case, it promised debit cards with a tiered cashback system payable in CRO. Investors who bought and staked at least $400,000 in CRO tokens — a staggering sum — could earn an equally staggering 8% cashback on purchases.

This incredible cashback offer at least quadrupled the average rate of elite cards from non-crypto card issuers.

The 8% figure, of course, was only sustained by a reliable stream of new users buying and locking up CRO tokens. When Crypto.com couldn’t maintain new user sign-up velocity, it predictably slashed its cashback.

It started charging other fees, as well. One Redditor even reported receiving an email from Crypto.com that said it would start charging cardholders who staked less than $40,000 in CRO tokens a 3% foreign transaction fee.

Crypto.com also offered perks for locking up CRO like free Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions, discounts on bookings at Expedia and AirBnB, and a private jet partnership for big investors. 

Investors staking CRO for long periods of time could earn an even higher interest rate: up to 12% APY in staking rewards.

By way of comparison, US banks’ certificates of deposit (CDs) tend to top out around 3.5% APY.

Readers will recall that Celsius Network used to offer a comparable APY on stablecoin deposits if stakers accepted payouts in its native CEL token. CEL is now nearly worthless amid Celsius’ bankruptcy proceedings.

Crypto.com apparently couldn’t sustain that high APY once it had already lured depositors. When it slashed its staking rewards in May 2022, the price of CRO halved within a month.

CRO once traded at a high of $0.98 on November 24, 2021, right around the time that Crypto.com announced a deal to rename the Los Angeles Lakers’ stadium. CRO has declined to $0.11 today. 

Red flag #5: Suspicious connections to collapsed companies

Crypto.com didn’t help itself by choosing Wirecard as a card issuer. Wirecard filed for insolvency in June 2020 and is widely considered to be one of the largest frauds in modern German history.

Wirecard’s problems started coming to a head when the auditors at Ernst & Young refused to rubberstamp accounting documents for 2019. This failed audit forced Wirecard CEO Markus Braun to admit that the firm had somehow misplaced over $2 billion.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek promised to refund debit card users who lost money due to Wirecard’s insolvency.

Read more: Even Matt Damon couldn’t save 2,000 Crypto.com staff

Wirecard’s bankruptcy also badly impacted fellow crypto debit card issuer TenX. It never recovered and hasn’t tweeted since 2021. TenX’s website remains offline.

Besides impacting Crypto.com and TenX, Wirecard’s bankruptcy got the attention of Germany’s financial system. It owed creditors $4 billion at the time of the bankruptcy. Some of its creditors said they were not counting on getting that money back. EY called it “an elaborate and sophisticated fraud.”

Finally, there were rumors that Wirecard and Crypto.com shared an executive with the last name Marsalek. However, Jan Marsalek was a Wirecard Chief Operating Officer; Kris Marszalek (with a “z”) is the CEO of Crypto.com.

Kris Marszalek does have a curious past, however, including the total collapse of a publicly listed company in Australia, Ensogo, and its subsidiary, BeeCrazy.

Conclusion

Crypto.com needs more people to buy and lock up CRO. Given the token’s 88% decline since November 24, 2021, however, demand seems to be waning.

As CRO declines, lay-offs continue, and cashback offers dwindle, Crypto.com will soon run out of money to buy the expensive ads needed to distract users from its own red flags.

Its Super Bowl commercial might have earned millions of impressions, but its long-term effect might have been the exact opposite of what the company intended.

Lay-offs are accelerating. Its main token, CRO, is approaching all-time lows, and it’s suffering a catastrophic loss of investor confidence. Its suspicious connections to failed companies like Wirecard, Ensego, and TenX have done little to restore that confidence.

In all, it is entirely unclear whether Crypto.com will be able to regain its position among top crypto exchanges. In mid-February 2022, the firm ranked among the top 10 spot exchanges but it’s fallen to 18th place today. Overspending on questionable marketing might have irreparably impaired the company’s ability to sustain its lofty rank.

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post Crypto.com is in big trouble — but the warnings were there appeared first on Protos.

More than 2,000 employees have either been fired or resigned from Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com since the firm began a series of major cutbacks in the wake of the market’s drastic downturn earlier this year.

As reported by AdAge, the company slashed its pre-summer workforce by up to 40% between June and August, and while there are no concrete figures to suggest exactly how many were laid off, former and current employees told AdAge that it was “the vast majority.”

It had previously been reported that Crypto.com fired 1,000 employees, including marketing personnel and an in-house creative team hired just months earlier. 

A Crypto.com spokesperson told AdAge: “As disclosed in June, Crypto.com underwent a restructuring process that concluded in July to strengthen our position amidst the backdrop of a bear market climate driven by macroeconomic conditions affecting nearly every industry,” (our emphasis).

“As part of that restructuring, we made the difficult decision to conduct targeted job reductions, 60% of those roles came from non-corporate, back office and support services tied to trade volumes.”

Crypto.com prioritized headlines over the bottom line

In addition to slashing its workforce, Crypto.com has also been forced to dramatically scale back its high-profile marketing efforts.

Back in October 2021, the firm made a splash with a glossy spot featuring Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon telling viewers to “embrace the moment” and “commit” to crypto.

Read more: Mass crypto layoffs are a short-term solution with long-term consequences

This was soon followed by a slew of mega-bucks deals, including sponsorships with the NBA, Formula One, and a $700 million sponsorship deal with LA’s former Staples Center.

However, less than a year later, things look very different. The company has, this month, backed out of a $495 million sponsorship deal with the UEFA Champions League, and by the end of the year will have brought to an end its partnership with esports league Twitch Rivals.

According to AdAge, Crypto.com’s current issues can be traced back to its desire for chasing big headlines rather than focusing on the more important business matters.

One former employee told the outlet, “They were just writing checks they could only cash when things were good.

“Funny money.”

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

The post Even Matt Damon couldn’t save 2,000 Crypto.com staff appeared first on Protos.