An Overperformer in Underperforming the Market

Although the entire crypto market as a whole seems quite content to catch fire and burn, a standout star of this recent market crash is the Cronos coin. A layer one blockchain with a lot of potential but currently no major utility disconnected from Crypto.com. Although the idea of staking the coin to get great returns on a Visa card (Ruby Holder) is appealing, the toxic danger of coins like this has become apparent quite recently. You hear it over and over in response to the question of "What is CRO's use case?" 

"Well, you use it to stake so you can get the rewards from the VISA cards."

Which works great until the VISA cards get cut into being absolutely worthless

First, Crypto.com announced they would be lowering their earn rates which may be understandable, as the company has admitted to receiving pressure from the SEC. However, on the very next day without warning, Crypto.com cut rewards on their cards to being nearly worthless (Midnight Blue still is!). The community was outraged and the coin fell from a support floor of around ~40 cents to breaking under 30 and landing around 27 cents within the day. Frantically, Crypto.com announced yet another change to their card rewards. 

You'll notice that every single tier below Obsidian now delivers a worse return than using the free card from Coinbase! Although you will get 1% more if you're willing to stake the small sum of $400,000 on a coin that is now doomed to a lack of trust. Unless this coin delivers a use case that disconnects it from the Crypto.com app, it will forever be at the mercy of a company which has shown a lack of tact and care in updates to their service. If a coin's value can tank more than 50% due to one bad announcement from the proprietors in a week, is it really decentralized? At this point Cronos just feels like a dumped version of Crypto.com funbux. 

I think this dump serves as a lesson to avoid proprietary coins without a solid use case as well as to be cautious about the future of CRO. Those with lower risk tolerances are better suited by more trusted architectures such as Ethereum or Cardano/Avalanche if you'd prefer. If you're going to invest in a proprietary coin that promises a high rate of return and has no use case past being used by the exchange app you find yourself using, don't be surprised if it all dumps to nothing over the course of a couple of days. 

This situation with Crypto.com should hopefully teach all of us the lesson.