Little known a year ago, the private company in Singapore aired eye-catching advertising during the Super Bowl alongside major brands (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/super -bowl-ads-are-moving-pandemic-with-humor-hope-2022-02-10) such as Budweiser, GM and Pringles, as well as competing cryptocurrency platforms, with the aim of significantly increasing its base of users.
Fellow cryptocurrency platforms FTX, Bitbuy, and eToro also ran Super Bowl ads. But the game is just Crypto.com’s latest advertising effort.
Last year she launched a $100 million advertising campaign in 20 countries with actor Matt Damon https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/staples-center-los-angeles-be-renamed-cryptocom -arena-2021-11-17, signed sponsorship deals https://frontofficesports.com/crypto-com-tops-400m-in-sports-deals-with-sixers-patch with the Philadelphia 76ers, the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Formula 1, and secured naming rights to the old Staples Center for 20 years. On Thursday night, the Crypto.com Arena hosted the Super Bowl Music Fest.
Six-year-old Crypto.com is the brand of a global group of entities operating under the name Foris DAX. Its financial data is not entirely public and Crypto.com has not disclosed the names of its investors, although it claims to have no backers on the Exchange.
His aggressive marketing campaign raised eyebrows. Some see this as a sign that the booming crypto market is a bubble about to burst.
“There’s a huge amount of money floating around in the system right now, and therefore everyone is in grabbing territory and looking for ways to put it to work,” said Adam Shapiro, a partner of the investment company Klaros Group.
Founded in 2016 by Hong Kong-based entrepreneurs, Crypto.com is the sixth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily volume, according to researcher CryptoCompare. It has more than 10 million users but wants to reach another billion, and become a global top 20 brand, said CEO Kris Marszalek.
Its strategy is to reach ordinary Americans through sports partnerships. Super Bowl advertising reaches approximately 100 million viewers. Broadcaster NBC is asking up to $7 million for 30 seconds.
“If you reach 150 million people potentially in one event, it could pay for itself pretty quickly,” said Paul Rogash, chief executive of BetU, a crypto sports betting platform.
The cryptocurrency market had a dizzying year in 2021 as money poured in, pushing the value of all cryptocurrencies over $3 trillion https://www.reuters.com/technology/bitcoin-hits- new-record-crypto-market-cap-exceeds-3-tln-2021-11-08.
Crypto.com has tried to get ahead of the game with high-profile partnerships, including the one announced last month with the basketball superstar https://crypto.com/company-news/lebron-james-and-the -lebron-james-family-foundation-announce-multi-year-partnership-with-crypto-com Lebron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, who will play their home games in the Crypto.com Arena.
His commercial with Damon, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Wally Pfister, was so widely released that South Park parodied it in its Feb. 2 season premiere.
“The scenario they’re playing is this: We’ve got a lot of money. Let’s get our name out there,” said Robert Siegel, a Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer and venture capitalist.
Crypto.com declined to comment.
A CRYPTO BUBBLE?
The company started as a crypto wallet and payment platform named Monaco and in 2017 raised $25 million through an initial coin offering. In 2018, it changed its name to Crypto.com and launched an exchange in 2019.
Like its rivals, Crypto.com collects fees on transactions, as well as on debit cards offered in partnership with Visa. It has a $500 million venture arm that invests in crypto and blockchain startups.
According to its website, the company has 3,000 employees worldwide and offers 584 positions to fill at https://crypto.com/us/careers in the areas of marketing, human resources, compliance, engineering and business development, among others.
This level of staff is larger than the 2,781 employees listed in the most recent filing of the largest US cryptocurrency exchange, publicly traded Coinbase, which was founded in 2012 and has 72 million users.
Last year, Crypto.com said it was expanding its base of institutional clients, such as hedge funds and market makers.
Unlike Binance, Coinbase and other rivals with Wall Exchange investors, Crypto.com claims to have never raised institutional funds. Marszalek told Bloomberg in January that the company’s revenue has increased 22-fold over the past year.
“They’re probably making a lot of money at a time when a market is wildly speculative,” Siegel said.
Some compare the cryptocurrency spending frenzy and meteoric growth of Crypto.com to the dotcom bubble, when several bloated tech companies went bankrupt. These people warned that investors are likely to dump risky digital assets when the US Federal Reserve begins to aggressively raise rates.
Cryptocurrencies have had a tough start to 2022, with bitcoin dropping below $40,000 for the first time since the fall.
Crypto.com is trying to position itself ahead of this pullback and doing whatever it takes to make it happen, said Mark Basa, global brand director at HOKK Finance, a cryptocurrency firm.
“I think they’re going to win this race,” he added.