Crypto.com

In June 2016, e-commerce company Ensogo shut down operations and its CEO, Kris Marszalek, resigned the same day; that same month Foris Limited was incorporated, marking his entry into crypto. Foris’s first crypto project was Monaco, whose leadership team was made up entirely of former Ensogo employees. Crypto.com counts 2016 as its founding year.⁠[1][1][1][2]

Hong Kong-based Monaco was best known for developing a crypto debit card, and in June 2017 completed an initial coin offering (ICO) that raised crypto then worth about $25 million.⁠[3][3]

In July 2018, Monaco bought the Crypto.com domain from University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry professor Matt Blaze, who had registered it in 1993; the parent company was renamed Crypto.com, and Monaco’s Visa card, peer-to-peer transfer and wallet services were renamed MCO, after its token. Marszalek did not disclose the price, saying only, “If it was only about money he’d have sold it a long time ago”; the domain cost $12 million. He said the company’s purpose was to accelerate the world’s adoption of cryptocurrency.⁠[3][3][3][4][3]

On November 14, 2019, Crypto.com, previously known mainly for custodial wallets and crypto-backed debit cards and with about 1 million wallet holders, announced its own exchange, opening to beta testers on November 18 and to the public in December, initially offering trading pairs quoted in CRO, USDT and bitcoin; it also launched The Syndicate, a fundraising platform for crypto projects. Marszalek said that in the next bull run, the companies that thrive would be those that build an entire ecosystem.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][5]

In 2021, Crypto.com poured money into sports marketing: it sponsored Italy’s Coppa Italia football final and the Montreal CanadiensMontréal CanadiensThe Montreal Canadiens, known in French as the Canadiens de Montréal, are a professional ice hockey team based in Montreal, Quebec. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) and play at the Bell Centre.Open the full entry, and in June became an inaugural partner of Formula 1’s Sprint format; in November it was announced that Los Angeles’ Staples Center would be renamed Crypto.com Arena from Christmas Day, with the 20-year naming rights priced at about $700 million, one of the largest naming deals in sports history, and the company also became an official partner of the Los Angeles LakersLos Angeles LakersThe Los Angeles Lakers are an NBA basketball team based at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The club originated in Minneapolis in 1947.Open the full entry and the LA Kings.⁠[6][6][7][7][7]

In December, Crypto.com agreed to buy the North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex) and Small Exchange from Britain’s IG Group for $216 million in order to offer derivatives and futures products to U.S. customers. In 2021 the company passed 10 million users and its revenue topped $1.2 billion.⁠[8][8][1]

On January 17, 2022, Crypto.com suspended withdrawals after users reported “unauthorized activity,” requiring users to sign back in and reset two-factor authentication, and resumed withdrawals later that day. Three days later the company acknowledged that hackers had stolen 4,836.26 ether (about $15.2 million), 443.93 bitcoin (about $18.7 million) and $66,200 from 483 user accounts, nearly $34 million in total, and that affected users had been fully reimbursed; it then introduced a Worldwide Account Protection Program covering qualified users for up to $250,000 if a third party gains unauthorized access to their accounts. Marszalek said the losses were “not particularly material” and customer funds were not at risk.⁠[9][9][9][10][10][10][10]

In March 2022, Crypto.com announced it would be an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the first crypto brand to sponsor the event, saying at the time that it had more than 10 million customers and over 4,000 employees. In May, the company announced it would end CRO staking rewards for card holders, prompting a fierce community backlash, and the next day kept them at reduced rates instead.⁠[11][11][11][12][12]

As crypto markets fell, Crypto.com cut about 260 jobs, around 5% of its workforce, in June 2022. In August it emerged that in 2021, after an employee mistakenly entered a customer’s account number into a refund spreadsheet, the company had sent A$10.47 million to a customer in Melbourne, Australia, and took seven months to notice.⁠[13][14][15][15][15]

After FTX collapsed in November 2022, Crypto.com published preliminary reserve wallet addresses; a dashboard by blockchain analytics firm Nansen showed that about 20% of roughly $2.88 billion in assets was in the meme coin SHIB, second only to bitcoin. It also emerged that in October the company had mistakenly sent about $400 million of ether to the Gate.io exchange, admitting it only after onchain data exposed the transfer. CRO fell nearly 45% in a week amid fears the exchange would be the next to face a liquidity crisis.⁠[16][16][1][14]

On November 14, Marszalek said in a livestream that the company’s balance sheet was strong, its exposure to FTX was only $10 million, the mistaken transfer had gone to the company’s own Gate.io account and had been fully recovered, and CRO had never been used as loan collateral; he also said sports sponsorships cost about a tenth of revenue each year. On December 9, the company released a proof of reserves from accounting firm Mazars showing customer assets backed one to one; an accounting academic noted that the report was a matching exercise based on client-provided information rather than an official audit.⁠[14][14][14][14][17][17]

On January 13, 2023, Crypto.com announced it was cutting about 20% of its workforce, with Marszalek attributing the decision to economic headwinds and the damage FTX’s collapse had done to trust in the industry. In June, citing limited institutional demand, the company said it would stop serving U.S. institutional clients from June 21, with retail customers unaffected. That month it also received a Major Payment Institution licence for digital payment token services from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.⁠[18][18][19][19][20]

In March 2024, the Dutch central bank announced that the previous October it had fined Foris DAX MT Limited, which runs Crypto.com, €2.85 million for providing crypto services in the Netherlands without registration for about two years before registering in July 2023, increasing the penalty because of its large number of customers and unpaid supervisory fees; the company called it a past and rectified issue and said it was appealing.⁠[21][21][21][21][21]

On April 9, Crypto.com’s local entity received full operational approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). The same month, after Korean media reported that South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit had begun an on-site inspection over problems with anti-money laundering data the exchange had submitted, Crypto.com postponed the planned April 29 launch of its retail app in Korea, saying its AML standards were the highest in the industry.⁠[22][23][23][23]

On August 22, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent Crypto.com a Wells notice, taking the view that network tokens other than bitcoin and ether are securities and that Crypto.com was operating as an unregistered broker-dealer and securities clearing agency. On October 8, Foris DAX Inc., the Delaware company operating as Crypto.com, sued the SEC, Chair Gary Gensler and four commissioners, seeking to stop the SEC from expanding its jurisdiction to secondary-market sales of those tokens; Marszalek called the suit a response to the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement.”⁠[24][24][24][24][24][24]

Crypto.com dropped the suit in December 2024. On March 27, 2025, the company announced that the SEC had told it that it had officially closed its investigation with no enforcement action and no settlement.⁠[2][2][2]

From July 2024, Crypto.com’s spot trading volume in North America exceeded Coinbase’s; in September its monthly spot volume reached $134 billion, up from $34 billion in July, while total volume on North American exchanges was $183 billion, of which Coinbase handled $46 billion.⁠[25][25][25]

In December 2024, Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA), the company’s exchange and clearinghouse regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), launched the first CFTC-regulated sports event contracts in the United States. The company had acquired CDNA in 2022.⁠[26][26]

Several state regulators then deemed these contracts unlicensed sports betting: on December 3, 2025, Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection sent cease-and-desist orders to Crypto.com, Robinhood and Kalshi, and on January 9, 2026, Tennessee’s Sports Wagering Council told Crypto.com, Kalshi and Polymarket to stop serving state residents, void open contracts and refund deposits by January 31. The companies argued that they are federally regulated by the CFTC.⁠[27][27][28][28][28]

In January 2025, Crypto.com’s Malta entity received in-principle and then full approval under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA), allowing it to passport services across the European Economic Area; in May, it obtained a MiFID licence by acquiring Cyprus-licensed A.N. Allnew Investments, allowing it to offer securities, derivatives, contracts for difference and other products in Europe.⁠[29][30][31][31]

In March 2025, the Cronos ecosystem associated with Crypto.com proposed reissuing the 70 billion CRO burned in 2021, restoring total supply to 100 billion, to be placed in a strategic reserve and released over 10 years to fund ecosystem growth and launch a CRO ETF. The proposal faced about 86% opposition early on, but in the final hours before voting closed several validators cast about 3.2 billion CRO of voting power in favor, and it passed with 61.18% yes.⁠[32][32][32][33][33][33]

On August 26, 2025, Crypto.com and Trump Media & Technology GroupTrump Media & Technology GroupTrump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is a publicly traded company headquartered in Sarasota, Florida. It operates Truth Social, the Truth+ streaming service and the Truth.Fi financial technology brand. The private company was formed in 2021 and completed its merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) in 2024. A separate proposed merger with fusion-energy company TAE Technologies remained subject to the filing and approval process in late September 2026.Open the full entry announced a strategic partnership: the rewards system on the Truth Social and Truth+ platforms would use Crypto.com’s wallet infrastructure and the CRO token; Trump Media bought about 685 million CRO for about $105 million and Crypto.com bought $50 million of Trump Media stock, both subject to lockups. A newly formed Trump Media Group CRO Strategy planned to merge with special purpose acquisition company Yorkville Acquisition and hold CRO as a treasury asset.⁠[34][34][34][35]

On October 28, 2025, the two companies announced that Truth Social would offer prediction markets, called Truth Predict, through CDNA. On August 7, 2026, they changed course, dropping a direct prediction market integration on Truth Social in favor of a marketing agreement promoting Crypto.com’s prediction markets to Truth Social users.⁠[36][36][37]

On September 30, 2025, Crypto.com announced that CDNA had received CFTC approval to amend its designated contract market (DCM) license to offer margined derivatives on cryptocurrencies and other assets; together with its existing futures commission merchant (FCM) and derivatives clearing organization (DCO) status, the company said it had become the first major crypto platform to hold all three types of derivatives licenses in the United States. In his statement, Marszalek thanked Acting Chairman Caroline Pham and the CFTC for advancing President Trump’s crypto agenda.⁠[38][38][38]

On February 3, 2026, Crypto.com launched OG, a standalone prediction market platform offering CFTC-regulated sports, financial, political and entertainment event contracts through CDNA, with Chief Legal Officer Nick Lundgren also serving as OG’s CEO; Marszalek said the company’s prediction market business had grown 40x on a weekly basis over the previous six months.⁠[26][26][26][26]

On February 23, Crypto.com announced conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to charter Foris Dax National Trust Bank (doing business as Crypto.com National Trust Bank) to provide custody, staking and trade settlement; the company had applied in October 2025. On February 27, its EU entity received a Limited Financial Institutions licence from the Malta Financial Services Authority to keep providing stablecoin services related to electronic money tokens. That month, the ai.com domain that Marszalek had personally bought for $70 million debuted with a Super Bowl ad.⁠[39][39][39][30][30][4][4]

In July 2026, Crypto.com marked its tenth anniversary. On July 16, the company announced a $400 million strategic investment from Citadel SecuritiesCitadel SecuritiesCitadel Securities is an American market maker founded in Chicago in 2002 by Ken Griffin and partners and headquartered in Miami, providing liquidity to institutional and retail investors across a range of financial products. It is a separate company from Citadel, the hedge fund Griffin founded in 1990.Open the full entry at a $20 billion valuation, its first institutional funding round in a decade, with the funds to support expansion into all asset classes including tokenized securities and derivatives. In 2022, Marszalek had said the company was “never going to raise funds” and that the business was cash flow positive.⁠[40][41][41][41][14]

Crypto.com’s vision is “Cryptocurrency in Every Wallet” and its mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency; as of October 2026, the company said it had 150 million users in 90 countries. Its products include the Crypto.com app, an exchange, a Visa prepaid card, custody, perpetual futures, tokenized stocks and prediction markets, and it supports the Cronos chain. The company says it holds more than 100 regulatory approvals, including FinCEN money services business registration, money transmitter licenses in more than 40 U.S. states, CFTC designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization status, and licenses in the UK, Singapore, Dubai and elsewhere.⁠[42][42][42][42][42][42][2][30]

The management team includes co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CFO Rafael Melo, co-founder and head of Crypto.com Capital Bobby Bao, and president and COO Eric Anziani. All three co-founders previously worked at Ensogo.⁠[42][42][42][42][42][42][42]

Crypto.com: Official website: https://crypto.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[43]

X: Public account: https://x.com/cryptocom (opens in a new window)⁠[43]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cryptocom (opens in a new window)⁠[42]