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Is Crypto.com news next? CRO token price plummets as exchange reveals its reserves are 20% SHIB meme coin, CZ takes aim

By Raphael Sanis

Edited by Charlie Mellor

12:19, 14 November 2022

The CRO logo in red on a bearish graph
Crypto.com holds $519m in shiba inu making up 21% of the exchange’s reserves – Photo: Shutterstock

The bankruptcy of FTX is pushing others to reveal their proof of reserves after the cryptocurrency exchange’s downfall was partially caused by holding large amounts of its own FTT token.

Crypto.com (CRO) has recently been part of this movement with it unveiling its holdings. But this has sparked concern as 21% of the exchange’s reserves were made up of the shiba inu (SHIB) meme token.

Crypto.com’s native token CRO has fallen in light of this news. As of 14 November, it had dropped in price by 41% in the past week.

CRO to USD

Crypto.com’s proactive approach

Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com, announced on 11 November that the exchange is preparing a proof of reserves audit. This was revealed on the same day its rival FTX filed for bankruptcy, following a liquidity crunch.

As part of this announcement, Marszalek disclosed a preliminary set of its holdings with the analytics platform Nansen.

Nearly $3bn worth of digital assets were revealed in Crypto.com’s possession. The majority was in bitcoin (BTC), which made up 33% or roughly $800m.

However, Crypto.com has come under fire as BTC was followed by SHIB, a meme token known for its volatility.

The exchange held around $519m of shiba inu, making up 21% of all its assets. This was over $100m more than ether (ETH) and $270m more than its stablecoin holdings.

BTC/USD

99,935.15 Price
+0.010% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 50.00

XRP/USD

2.56 Price
+1.180% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.01276

DOGE/USD

0.46 Price
+1.050% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.0023104

ETH/USD

3,991.36 Price
-0.390% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 22:00 (UTC)
Spread 1.75
A pie chart of Crypto.com's token reservesOver 50% of Crypto.com's reserves are made up of BTC and SHIB – Credit: Nansen

While SHIB promises more utility than its inspirer dogecoin (DOGE), its primary use case is often considered as speculation and it has seen hefty price fluctuations over the past two years.

Explaining these reserves, a Crypto.com spokesperson said: “The reason our proof of reserves include shiba [inu] is because we hold customers’ balances 1:1. Thus, our proof of reserves are dictated by our customer holdings.”

Crypto.com’s transfer mistake

However, this was followed by more bearish news for Crypto.com. It was revealed on 13 November that Crypto.com had accidentally sent $400m ETH to the wrong address.

Marszalek said it intended to move the funds to a new cold storage address on 29 October, but instead sent it to Gate.io, another cryptocurrency exchange. But these funds were eventually recovered by the Crypto.com team.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Binance, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao criticised Crypto.com. He tweeted: “If an exchange have to move large amounts of crypto before or after they demonstrate their wallet addresses, it is a clear sign of problems. Stay away.”

CRO’s price fall

The CRO token has seen a steady fall after its preliminary reserves were revealed last Friday. It stooped to a low of $0.058 on 13 November.

However, it has shown signs of recovery at the time of writing and managed to climb 4% in the past 24 hours.

As of 14 November, CRO was trading at $0.071, but was still down 41% on the past seven days.

Markets in this article

CRO/USD
Crypto.com Coin / USD
0.20198 USD
-0.00379 -1.860%
SHIB/USD
Shiba Inu / USD
0.00003226 USD
-0.00000033 -1.010%
BTC/USD
Bitcoin / USD
99935.15 USD
11.75 +0.010%
DOGE/USD
DogeCoin / USD
0.4632265 USD
0.0048142 +1.050%
ETH/USD
Ethereum / USD
3991.36 USD
-15.8 -0.390%

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The difference between trading assets and CFDs
The main difference between CFD trading and trading assets, such as commodities and stocks, is that you don’t own the underlying asset when you trade on a CFD.
You can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional trading you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the individual shares or the commodities for money, and you own this until you sell it again.
CFDs are leveraged products, which means that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of the CFD trade in order to open a position. But with traditional trading, you buy the assets for the full amount. In the UK, there is no stamp duty on CFD trading, but there is when you buy stocks, for example.
CFDs attract overnight costs to hold the trades (unless you use 1-1 leverage), which makes them more suited to short-term trading opportunities. Stocks and commodities are more normally bought and held for longer. You might also pay a broker commission or fees when buying and selling assets direct and you’d need somewhere to store them safely.
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