In response to a  user's comment from an earlier post, I thought I would dig into what appears to be an Int'l Team with a split dev personality in HK and CN operating at Crypto.com?

Let's have a look... First through the 'Business Transparency Lens' for both Investor Liquidity and Security (Store of Value) Purposes

and Second 

Through the 'Tech Value Add Lens',

ie Is Crypto.com really creating unique new value and do they have the tech chops to do so @ scale with security?

Crypto.Com: HK or CN company, or Both? Or Does it really matter anymore?

If I am reading the distribution of  development employees on linkedin correctly, some development is located in CN and some in HK, along with some International Development Seats.

Does it matter? Well CN is getting it's way with HK, regardless of what any other sources might imply or say, which means Crypto.com is for all intents and purposes HQ'd in CN.

OK the Crypto.com CEO is a PL national  and there are International staff strewn about the globe, all good. Which means there appears on the surface  to be a continuity of business plan for crypto.com in place, should HK be shutdown effectively with reduced International travel given the stresses of International Politics these days between CN and USA.

OK the next big question: Where are the network of nodes located for crypto.com?

Tougher to find information about this, Here is what I found

Keep in mind, nodes are just software and can be rigged to port mirror effectively to create a copy of transactions sent elsewhere for later forensic analysis by unscrupulous parties with big honking computers. Don't think that happens? It does, daily. 

Also , who is really running the network connecting the Nodes and how is it setup in terms of data flows and the paths chose to connect the nodes to reach consensus on transactions? Do you really know where crypto.com data flows go, on a regular basis and are they truly secure. (quantum computers are now operating on selective tasks, I would hazard a guess that cracking different encryption methods is one of the primary selective tasks of Quantum computing, given financially, in all regimes, it's all about protecting the status quo.)

Real Value Add: What's the Crypto.com True Value Add Score?

Buy Crypto with their credit card and their is no fee, is what jumps out at you from their website first.

20 Top Currencies  in the first pane  in BTC, USTD and CRO terms. All useful and a Nice Exchange Interface via my #Brave Browser, didn't even have to log in.

"The Only Place to Buy Crypto at True Cost" blares away when you pick Apps from the top menu, Apple and Android"

"7 fiat and 55 cryptocurrencies." is the total scope of the exchange offer, accessed via the two different App types. All good.

"Access, manage and spend your funds with the MCO #Visa Card anytime.". Ok I assume this means  my USDT is kept here.

In the world of Fiat I can "Top up with a bank transfer, debit or credit card, or crypto". Nice.

In the world of crypto I can "Buy crypto with fiat wallet or with credit or debit card" Convenience Factor is very high.

MCO Visa is clearly tied to the VISA Settlement network, where fees apply. all good.

Staking of different duration earns you more (longer stake period) or less (short 1 month stake period) across supported coins, stable coins and the native Crypto.com token.

Now the loan part,  invest in crypto, get a loan...  with the following features:

• Get the credit limit you want, not what you’re given. OK this is unique value add...
• Gain credit directly in your crypto wallet. Also apparently a unique feature among a few coins
• Pay whenever you want. Hmm, scratching my head at this, I assume it means IF you are ok paying interest on your loan at higher rates 
• No statement deadlines. OK, this is fluid and fair, unique award button earned.

Now for the Loan ratio, 50% of what is on deposit, so better, much better than most lines of credits from banks these days, because in effect you are your own bank?

And the important note on this page?

NOTE

Digital Currencies are NOT bank deposits, are NOT legal tender, are NOT backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are NOT subject to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or Securities Investor Protection Corporation or any other governmental or government-backed protections. Legislative and regulatory changes or actions at the State, Federal, or international level may adversely affect the use, transfer, exchange, and value of Digital Currencies.

OK  on to Payment for your website offers, Crypto.com "has your back" on this one too

• Low fees, or no fees.
• Pay zero processing fees for settlements in crypto, or save up to 80% on fees versus typical payment processors.

Backed up with lots of software developer options from:

WooCommerce, EcWid, Opencart,  Loveit  , All good, not unique but good. (Shopify support would be nice.)

To learn more about the staking you do to obtain different levels of MCO Visa cards with Crypto.com go here

Stake your own Credit Card: Now that's different..

Given you are staking to acquire your own VISA credit/debit card with Crypto.com, you are indeed financing yourself, which gives you access to the worldwide VISA network and to a host of other conveniences, all you need to do is read the fine print regarding actual credit charges...

 

TK view: Is Crypto.com worth its #10 Market Cap ranking on Coin Gecko through the investor lens? 

From an investor perspective. Yes. The team has obviously been busy since its inception after a US$ 27 Million ICO take back  in 2017, where Crypto.com coin made its 'trading' debut January 1st, 2019, a little more than 18 months ago,went through the early hype curve, and has since exceeded even that peak in the last few months. 

Frankly, I have not tracked Cypto.com until a reader brought it up a week or ago in response to one of my posts. I am glad they did.

Outside looking in, Kris Marszalek  https://www.linkedin.com/in/krismarszalek/  has been at the helm navigating the Crypto.com ship through some nasty COVID dips in 2020 and has had his team stay focused spread out across HK, CN, India, Singapore, Bulgaria, United Kingdom, USA and more places focused on delivering value which has seen the volume perk up since May 21st, 2020, probably the moment of big Whale Discovery.

Now let's look at the  Crypto.com growth in transaction volume over the past 18 months since the coin debuted:

Volume has driven Crypto.com up the Marketcap charts quickly to #10 with some healthy daily volume over US $65M or more per day since May 21st, 2020. From what I can tell, Whales are making use of both the exchange and the settlement token and likely easy stable coin access to jump in and out of other popular currencies with alacrity. 

A Sneak peak at individual top volumes for different popular coins shows pretty healthy volume between the MCA Visa Pair and the Native CRO token and the CRO Token and ETH  pair leading the charts today, which has indicative volume compared to the days since May 21st 2020, which tells me their system is working nicely.

The detailed window transaction volume for each pair shows transaction ranging from US $3.00 up to multiple ETH coins being traded a healthy volume of  individual bid/ask positions on the CRO  ETH and MCO pairs, so the utility of the exchange is there and investors are definitely engaged.

https://github.com/crypto-com   is the github repository for th development effort, where primary/submitter contributors can be tracked, usually assigned to one person for each part of the development project, where each part may have a few or several developers behind that part of the project. A simple , 'brute force'  way to swag what that count of developers is behind each part of the project is to look at issue activity looking at open vs. closed also helps gauge the amount of activity going on.

My cursory glance at the github repository for Crypto.com tells me the project is active, developers are servicing issues with some degree of timeliness and the community of developers looks robust.

Under the hood:  There is a lot going on at Crypto.com...

Which is both good and at the very same time extremely challenging.  VISA, Exchange, Payments, Wallet/App Development  and a Settlement token Network tells me Crypto.com has 5 fronts opened up at once, each of which needs a development owner and a focused team, and there also needs to be an integration and reference platform based development and test set of workflows.

It's a tall set of orders which requires skilled people to tie it all together. Being in Hong Kong there is no shortage of that  Fintech development talent and India also brings much muscle as does China to the core development and test effort. There also is expertise located in the UK, Eastern Europe and the USA.

That said 5 fronts managed concurrently and integrated seamlessly is well, VERY Impressive, IF the code quality and user experience is there and,  Crypto.com are scoring high marks on the CX "Customer Experience" side of things, then it's safe to say Crypto.com is "on a roll".

Scaling the above  effort though, which is complex, to huge volumes of users and transactions is also a VERY big challenge.

The github activity is well organized, and the contributors are engaged. That said 'Code' is not documentation, so Crypto.com imo, need help in that respect to improve the quality of their documentation.

The 'core' project appears to be 100% if you leave the partner connectors for payments out of the mix, which I frankly have not looked at yet.

Public Face and Support: KR CN and UK Languages Supported, Worldwide Dev Team

It's clear Crypto.com is targeted at the Indian speaking market together with the HK/CN market and South Korea.

Given the International spread of the team into India, Europe, the UK and the USA, its clear Crypto.com's user base is also International in scope.

Crypto.com: A (relatively) NEW Entrant Fast Out of the Gate in 2019:

Will Crypto.com keep rising to Finish in the Top 10 in 2020, on all Five Value Fronts?

On the surface, Crypto.com looks really solid and imo, is worthy of it''s #10 market Cap ranking.

Through the technical lens, I am still digging, but what I see so far is better than most projects out there, with some room for improvement in the documentation space. 

If you are an investor/consumer where credit cards are BIG part of your life daily, then Crypto.com is  the only Top 10 "Value Add" crypto project to look at, at the moment, imo, which goes way beyond what TenX https://tenx.tech/ started out to do in 2017. 

For me, I am still learning the technical side of Crypto.com and don't yet have a clear understanding as to whether their services will stand up to high transaction volumes.  This I think, is crypto.com's big challenge for 2021. For now though, the #Crypto.com exchange with a modest number of coins handled, wired to the native COR token and with easy access USTD liquidity, with easy "on-boarding" of fiat value through the VISA network makes much sense. I am liking what I see so far. On the technical white paper here

I will report back when I find out more about Crypto.com's technical acumen as it applies to transaction scaling and settlement security and privacy.

TK over and out. 

*****