Who owns the most Crypto.com tokens? CRO facing massive price pressure as transparency drive exposes missteps
2022 has been a challenging year for Crypto.com (CRO), a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange and its native token, amid volatile economic factors and dwindling investor confidence.
The recent collapse of the FTX (FTT) exchange negatively affected the cryptocurrency market. On 14 November, the CRO token fell to a 52-week low of $0.0562.
As of 25 November, CRO was trading at $0.06364, down more than 93% from its all-time high price of $0.9698 of 24 November 2021.
Crypto.com’s sponsorship of the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar has had little influence on CRO price action. The cryptocurrency seems to be trading sideways with no bullish breakthrough indications.
How would the CRO token fare under these circumstances? Who owns the most Crypto.com tokens?
What is Crypto.com and how does it work?
Crypto.com was launched in 2016 as a cryptocurrency payment gateway aiming to expedite the global adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Kris Marszalek, Rafael Melo, Gary Or and Bobby Bao co-founded the crypto payments firm that previously operated under Monaco Technology GmbH. Later, it was relaunched as Crypto.com, and its platform token, formerly known as Monaco Coin (MCO), was renamed CRO.
The platform has since exploded alongside the crypto market to become one of the industry's most prominent names. It offers an exchange, a variety of decentralised finance (DeFi) services, such as crypto lending and borrowing, a non-custodial wallet and its own non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.
Crypto.com is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain created using the Cosmos SDK with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility. In other words, it is interoperable with ethereum (ETH) and Cosmos-based ecosystems, enabling straightforward portability of Ethereum smart contracts and decentralised applications (dApps).
The CRO coin is the native token of Crypto.com. CRO is an ERC20 token, which grants users access to various tiered advantages within the Crypto ecosystem. CRO can also be staked to become a validator and collect token incentives.
Additionally, Crypto.com provides a prepaid Visa card that operates like a debit card with incentives, enabling customers to spend their cryptocurrency holdings. Although the Crypto.com card is accessible to everyone, those who acquire and plan to stake CRO stand to profit the most from it.
CRO tokenomics
According to CoinMarketCap, CRO has yielded a return on investment (ROI) of 220% since its inception. As of 25 November, the token was trading at $0.6364, with a total supply of 30.26 billion tokens. There are 25.26 billion CRO tokens in circulation.
The maximum supply is the total number of coins or tokens that will ever be created. This means that no more coins will be mined or generated once the maximum is reached.
The CRO token maximum supply was set at 100 billion coins when the token was first introduced. In February 2021, Crypto.com vowed to burn 70 billion CRO tokens, calling it the “biggest token burn in history”.
According to the platform’s plan, the first batch of 59.6 billion CRO tokens was burnt in February 2021. Meanwhile, 10.4 billion coins were locked in a smart contract and would be burned every month when unlocked.
Of the total 70 billion tokens, 20 billion came from the token’s capital reserve, 5.5 billion from the community development fund, 10.4 billion from secondary distribution and launch incentives, 19.1 billion from ecosystem grants, and 15 billion from network long-term incentives.
This burn was done to limit the circulating quantity of CRO tokens and improve their value. It increased the circulating supply from 24% to over 80%.
Who owns the most Crypto.com tokens? CRO whales analysis
The CRO coin currently has a dual chain architecture and exists both on its own mainnet and as a secondary token on the Ethereum blockchain.
Mainnet
According to CoinCarp data, as of 25 November, there were 10,42,856 CRO token holders, up more than 5% from 9,92,734 on 27 October, indicating a massive rise in token holders over one month. The top 10 holders held 7.92% of the CRO supply, while the top 100 held 8.62%.
Who has the most Crypto.com tokens? Cronos was the biggest crypto.com holder, with 912.53 million tokens or 3.61% of the current circulating supply.
Among other Crypto.com holders, an anonymous wallet held 285.52 million tokens, or 1.13% of the circulating supply, making it the second-largest CRO token holder.
Ethereum
CoinCarp data further suggested that the CRO token supply on Ethereum was relatively centralised, compared to the mainnet token holdings.
There were 2,83,322 CRO token holders on Ethereum, up from 2,72,904 on 27 October, a rise of 3.8% within a month.
The top 10 crypto.com holders held 92.58% of the CRO supply, while the top 100 held 96.04%, making the coin highly susceptible to pump-and-dump operations.
A further examination highlighted that the CRO burn address held 77.88 billion tokens, amounting to 77.89% of the original supply before the burn mechanism (the burn mechanism was implemented in February 2021).
Crypto.com was the top holder of Crypto.com tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, with 8.42 billion tokens or approximately 8.5% of the original supply.
Several other exchanges, including KuCoin and Coinbase Pro, also held some CRO tokens.
Apart from these exchanges, more wallets contained a large number of CRO tokens on the mainnet and Ethereum. Since crypto wallets are anonymous, the identities of these CRO whales were hidden from the public.
CRO token news and price drivers
The collapse of FTX and its native token, FTT, triggered enormous losses, with Cronos among the coins suffering the most from the severe selloff.
Making matters worse, Etherescan data revealed that on 21 October, Crypto.com moved 320,000 ETH to another exchange named Gate.io by mistake.
Kris Marszalek, the CEO of Crypto.com, confirmed on Twitter on 13 November, that the transaction was an error. Instead of their cold wallet, the whitelisted address belonged to one of their business accounts on a third-party exchange, he said.
Widespread rumours suggest that Crypto.com might be the next cryptocurrency firm to shut down due to a lack of liquidity. According to Marszalek, however, there is no need for fear since the company is "solvent".
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao echoed similar worries in a tweet on 13 November, adding that if an exchange needs to transfer a substantial quantity of cryptocurrency before or after disclosing its wallet addresses, it clearly indicates difficulties.
Amid all this, the CRO token declined to a 52-week low of $0.0562 on 14 November, highlighting dwindling investor confidence.
The bottom line
Due to the large selection of contemporary financial services, including those based on DeFi principles, the Crypto.com platform and CRO tokens have been popular. However, the project's survival could be at a crossroads due to a poor market reputation and the recent bankruptcy of competitor exchange FTX.
While knowing key info about the CRO tokenomics, who owns the most crypto.com tokens, and other crucial facts is important for accessing the project’s health, it shouldn’t substitute your own research.
You should always conduct your own due diligence before trading, looking at the latest news, technical and fundamental analysis, and a wide range of analysts’ opinions before making any trading decision.
Keep in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. And never trade or invest money that you cannot afford to lose.