Crypto.com was established in 2016 with a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency. Crypto.com believes it is your basic human right to control your money, data and identity.  

Crypto.com continues to live up to their mission as they have over 10 million users globally and a staff of 900 employees worldwide. 

Since they are a blockchain-based financial services company, saving your crypto with them to earn interest and spending via a visa card is an important part to their business model.

Crypto.com Features and Benefits

As a blockchain-based financial services firm, Crypto.com is a one stop shop for much of your crypto based needs. They have built their services into a nice app so everything is right at your fingertips.

They also allow you to transfer your crypto between Crypto.com app users free of charge.

However, Crypto.com is best known for their broad range of crypto they service and generous interest rates and crypto rewards programs.

Supported Currencies and Yield

Crytpo.com is regularly adding new supported currencies. Check back for updates as we update this post regularly.

Crypto.com App

The Crypto.com app is one of the fastest growing crypto apps on the market with over 10 million users buying and selling over 100 cryptocurrencies at true cost.

When you log into the app (download here), you’ll find current balances of:

1. your fiat wallet,
2. crypto wallet,
3. crypto EARN deposits and
4. Crypto.com Visa card balance.

The fiat wallet contains the money you have sent to Crypto.com, but have yet to exchange for crypto or to top up the visa card.

The crypto wallet holds the keys to the cryptocurrencies you have purchased with your fiat wallet.

Crypto Earn is where you deposit your crypto to earn interest.

Lastly, the Crypto.com visa card is a debit card that allows you to earn additional crypto rewards such as crypto cash back or crypto reimbursements for services like Netflix and Spotify (among others).

Moving Funds from your Bank to Crypto.com Fiat Wallet

As a blockchain-based financial services firm, it starts with buying crypto. The process to buying crypto includes transferring your fiat currency (ie-USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, etc) to a crypto dealer like Crypto.com.

Depending on your jurisdiction, the method to transfer your fiat currency to Crypto.com may differ. I set up bill pay for Crypto.com in the same way I would pay my electric bill. After confirming a couple of small transactions, the connection between my home bank and Crypto.com is established.

Now, initiate a transfer of your US dollars, Euros, Australian dollars, etc to your Crypto.com wallet. When the funds arrive at Crypto.com, they will deposit them into your fiat digital wallet.

There are two things you can do with the money in the fiat wallet. You can use those funds to buy crypto or you can top up your Crypto.com visa card.

Buying Crypto with your Fiat Wallet

One of the biggest attractions to Crypto.com is their extremely large range of cryptocurrencies you can purchase. At the time of this writing, you can buy more than 100 different cryptocurrencies with them.

When you explore, analyze and research a cryptocurrency project via the app, if it can be purchased with Crypto.com you will find a large BUY button on the page. You can buy with your fiat wallet funds or sell another cryptocurrency to buy the new one.  

Once you have acquired those cryptocurrencies, the next step is to decide where you want to store them. You can pull the crypto offline into your own cold storage or you can keep the private keys with Crypto.com. There are advantages to either situation so it depends on what your goals are with the crypto.

Individuals with the goal of a long-term large investment in crypto, might consider the cold storage route.

If you are ok with exchanges like Crypto.com holding your private keys, then they offer handsome interest rates for lending your crypto out.

How to Earn Interest with Crypto.com

Their interest-bearing program is called “Crypto Earn” and it is VERY easy to get started.

When you click on the “Earn” section within the app you will find options to add deposits or withdraw from the EARN program.

If you want to deposit your Bitcoin or favorite stablecoin to earn interest, simply add it to the program by pressing the plus “+” sign. Then, you will be asked which cryptocurrency you want to deposit. Crypto.com’s Earn program is one of the most diverse interest-bearing programs out there as you can deposit 35 different cryptocurrencies to earn interest.  

Currently, the stablecoins offer the largest interest rate between 6-14% annually. With Bitcoin, you can earn between 1.5% and 8.5% annual.

Once you select the cryptocurrency, you’ll be prompted to enter how much crypto you wish to deposit. Essentially, all you are doing is moving it from your crypto wallet over to the Earn program.

The next prompt is selecting a term of deposit. Crypto.com offers three different terms.

1. Flexible Interest Rates
2. 1 Month Term Deposit
3. 3 Month Term Deposit

Crypto.com Flexible Interest Rate Deposits

These types of deposits are just as they sound, flexible. As a result of this flexibility, these deposits will be earning the lowest interest rates. You can make the deposit today and decide to withdraw the deposit tomorrow and earn one day’s worth of interest in the process. Or, you can keep the deposit as flexible for an indefinite period of time.

Flexible interest rate deposits are desired if you don’t want your crypto needlessly tied up for too long.

For example, let’s assume you want to buy some bitcoin but you are waiting for the price to drop. You can use your fiat wallet to buy some Dai (a stablecoin), then place Dai into a flexible contract earning 6%.  

That way, when the price of bitcoin drops to a level where you want to buy, you can withdraw your Dai immediately from Earn and turn around to buy bitcoin with it. In the meantime, you would have earned a little Dai interest deposited into your crypto wallet.

Crypto.com 1 Month Term Deposit

The 1 Month Term means you are locking up your deposit for 30 days. Once you agree to this term, you will not be able to withdraw the deposit until the term expires.

This option is used when an investor does not have a need for the cryptocurrency for at least a month. Investors will also use this option to help ladder into various expiration dates too.

The interest rate on a 1 month term is better than flexible. As an example, Dai deposited into a 1 month term would earn 8% versus the flexible 6%.

Crypto.com 3 Month Term Deposit

The 3 Month Term brings the largest interest rate, but you will have to lock up your crypto for 90 days. If your time horizon is long term and if you don’t plan on needing to sell the crypto beforehand, then this option is great.  

The interest rate is significantly higher than the flexible term so you get to earn a high rate for a buy and hold strategy.

As an example, an investor that deposits Dai into a 3 month term would see 10% interest annually. Likewise, the 3 month bitcoin rates are near 4.5%.

You can see what the current rates are for your crypto and term.

Fortunately, the app will display the interest rate for each of the terms so it is clear ahead of time what your rate will be. The longer the term, the greater the interest rate.

Generally speaking, the minimum deposit to a contract is around the equivalent of $250. Since the value of cryptocurrencies can fluctuate, the minimum US dollar equivalent will fluctuate as well.

Crypto.com Interest Payment Frequency

Interest within the Crypto.com Earn program is paid once per week. If you start the deposit on Wednesday, then you will receive interest on the next Wednesday.  

When the interest is paid, it will get deposited as the same currency into your crypto wallet. For example, you deposit bitcoin into Earn, then you’ll receive interest paid in bitcoin that will appear in your crypto wallet. It is important to remember this is a simple interest calculation and not compound interest.

In a rising bull market, earning interest in a strengthening currency is a great thing.  This means the value of your investment AND interest are increasing in value.

In a falling bear market, the opposite can happen where the interest you earn is worth less even though the interest rate remains constant.

Increase your Crypto.com Interest Rate Even More with Staking

Crypto.com pays a higher interest rate when you stake their token, CRO. Before explaining the benefits, let’s first dive into staking.

What is staking?

Staking is a “consensus” mechanism for how the blockchain is secured preventing users from printing extra coins they didn’t earn. 

A huge benefit of blockchain is that it can be decentralized. That means everybody can access it but nobody controls it. Since there is not a central authority controlling it, there needs to be a way to ensure proper tracking. Otherwise, people would spend more coins than they earned undermining the entire system. Such a scenario would collapse the coin making it worthless.

When you stake Crypto.com’s native token, CRO, you are essentially putting it on deposit so that you can participate in the network’s validation of new blocks being created. There are rewards associated with newly created blocks and a portion of those rewards get passed along to you.

Therefore, you can simply park your cryptocurrencies into Crypto.com’s Earn program and earn a little interest. Or, you can juice up the interest rate by staking additional funds as CRO.

Earn up to 14% Annual Interest with the Highest Tier of Staking

There are essentially 3 different tiers of staking that affect the interest rate within the Crypto.com Earn program

• 0-49,999 CRO stake
• 50,000-499,999 CRO stake
• 500,000 or greater CRO stake

The greater the stake, the greater the interest rate. Let’s go through a couple examples.

A stake of 50,000 CRO (around $7,500-$15,000 depending on the exchange rate) will open up an increased interest rate for you within the Crypto.com Earn program.  

For stablecoins, that is an increased interest rate of 2% across each of the contract terms. It varies for bitcoin, but could be as much as a 2% increase for the rate. As an example, a 3-month term deposit with a 50,000 CRO stake would yield 6.5% on the bitcoin deposit.

For a stake of 500,000 CRO (around $75,000 – $150,000) the rates move up even higher. A 3 month deposit of stablecoins into the Earn program will yield 14% and bitcoin’s interest rate is 8.5%.

Oh, by the way, when you stake CRO with Crypto.com, you will also earn 6% interest on the staked CRO.

Is Staking Safe?

Cryptocurrency staking is often a more profitable means to earn interest, but with some added risk.

First, Earn deposits are not backed by governments and they are not insured by FDIC and SIPC. Therefore, you won’t have the same level of protections like you would with a bank deposit.

Additionally, the valuation of the underlying cryptocurrency (CRO) could fall diminishing the value of the interest earned.

Also, a minimum 180 days staking period is required (6 months). You will earn interest on the CRO, but that CRO which you lock up is inaccessible for 6 months.

The inflexibility of tying up funds in CRO is a big potential risk. If the value of CRO diminishes, you would not be able to withdraw until the contracts are met.

Additional Ways to Receive Crypto with Crypto.com

Another interesting feature with Crypto.com is that you can utilize them with a visa debit card and earn cash back crypto.  

For example, I can go to the store or a restaurant and pay with this card and the merchant will have no idea it was obtained via a blockchain-based financial firm.

In my case, the merchant will receive US dollars just like if I were paying with my other debit or credit card.

The big benefit of using the card is that cash back rewards are paid in crypto. Cash back rewards start at 1% of the purchase amount, but can range to a high of 8% depending on how much CRO you stake. Additionally, you have the opportunity to receive other staking benefits like Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon Prime membership reimbursements.

Crypto.com Rewards Visa Card

A second way to gain crypto via crypto.com’s financial services is to take advantage of their visa card.

You can grab the visa card and receive 1% cash back on all purchases. 

Or, with your staking above, you can also obtain one of their visa cards.

For example, a 50,000 CRO stake not only provides a higher interest rate for your Earn, but also provides a higher cash back reward.  

Let’s assume an investor stakes 50,000 CRO and grabs a Jade Green Visa card with Crypto.com. The investor could then earn up to 12% annual interest on stablecoins and up to 6.5% on bitcoin through the Earn program. 

The investor would also earn 6% on the CRO staking (about 250 CRO per month).  

Additionally, the card benefits include Spotify and Netflix membership reimbursement. If our investor has $20 of subscriptions in Spotify and Netflix, that means about 117 CRO monthly (at a 0.17 CROUSD exchange rate).  

Lastly, if the investor spends about $500 per month on the card, then 3% rewards would add another 88 CRO.

Our investor would be hauling in about 455 monthly CRO as rewards for staking plus a higher interest rate in their Earn program. This does not include the interest earned on their stablecoins or bitcoin either!

The cross-over of staking to receive a higher interest rate, more rewards with the visa card, plus a broad range of cryptocurrencies to earn interest on explains why Crypto.com has been growing rapidly to more than 10 million users.

Next Steps

Visit Crypto.com to begin the process of creating and setting up your digital wallet – or – read our rundown of the top crypto savings accounts on the market in 2021.