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So first all let me once again preface that I am not a financial advisor, and that the following is just semi-coherent ramble on my thoughts of CRYPTO.COM and their prepaid debit cards.
And this leads me to my first point. It irks me whenever I see posts referring these cards as credit cards. They're not.
They're PREPAID debit cards
This makes an huge difference. There are many vendors that don't take prepaid debit cards because they're notoriously often used in scams. I've had quite a lot of experience in prepaid debit cards after having done a lot of manufactured spending for credit card bonuses. This is also probably one of the reasons why Crypto.com won't let you use them to purchase cryptocurrencies on their own app. And because they're not built as credit cards, its also not a surprise to me why they really aren't that heavy on specifying that they're prepaid debit cards and not credit cards/regular debit cards. Prepaid debit cards are also notorious for having lots of hidden fees and Crypto.com cards are no different. I find it pretty disingenuous that they don't offer the fee structure on their main advert page, and instead state that you need to find the fees in their 'Settings' page on the Crypto.com app. The fees are as follows:
I'd be very hesitant about asking for a physical card unless you really need one, and also if you're really only in it to get that lounge pass or Netflix subscription, make sure you set a calendar reminder to have some spend on there every year.
For those of you that are unaware, Crypto.com offers a wide range of cards with a pretty wide range of benefits:
In a nutshell, the more that you choose to stake, your returns and rewards also increase. This leads me to my second point:
The cards have some pretty nice benefits, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get staking rewards. For instance, the Midnight Blue and Ruby Steel cards do not get specific % staking rewards. The first level that you is if you get the Royal Indigo/Jade Green at 10%. And even at 10%, this is significantly lower than on the Defi Wallet App, which last I checked was around 13%. This is also another important distinction, your CRO needs to be staked on the Crypto.com app, and NOT the Defi Wallet App. I made this mistake big time. I saw that the best staking interests rate were on the Defi Wallet App, so I staked my CRO there, not realizing that it wasn't eligible towards the prepaid debit cards. Once I realized my mistake, I went to unstake my Crypto.com Defi Wallet App CRO, only to find out abruptly that there is a 28-day unbonding period. Now my CRO are caught in a 28-day holding period until I can move it to the Crypto.com app. Now this 28-day unbonding period sucks, but another consideration to make is that if you choose to stake on the Crypto.com app instead, you also need to lock up and stake your CRO for 6 whole months. In addition, the moment you unstake the required CRO, you still might retain your current prepaid debit card tier level, but your benefits are significantly lessened as seen here:
Alternatively on the Crypto.com Defi Wallet app you can unstake at any time, the only penalty is the 28-day unbonding days.
And speaking of Apps, I hate that there's two and they really should have come up with names, like Alpha or Beta. I'm sure that the customer service reps are fielding tons of questions for people confused between the two. And I don't feel for them at all, the names simply need to be changed, or they simply need to find a way to integrate the two to make things easier.
But continuing on with the fact that there's two different places to stake with two different reward rates, lets talk about whether or not the benefits gained from the cards are worth it not to stake at a higher rate on the Crypto.com Defi Wallet app.
Case 1: Ruby Steel
The Ruby Steel card has a $400 USD staking requirement. But lets assume that you took this %400 and staked it on the Crypto.com Defi Wallet app instead. At the time of this post, I'm seeing the highest staking rewards rate at 13.29% (which I'm assuming is APY). Let's plug this into the calculator.
This roughly comes out to around $4 for a month's stake. Alternatively the Ruby's benefit of a 1-month Spotify membership is $12.99 a month (even though a standard Spotify premium membership only costs $9.99, I'm assuming the difference comes from the fact that since Crypto.com is European-based they really want to cover a 9.99 euro fee.). But let's consider this $12.99 membership fee as $12.99 interest instead, so back in our calculator:
Damn that looks pretty good, a 46.74% APY over just one month.
Case 2: Royal Indigo/Jade Green
The Royal Indigo/Jade Green card has a $4000 staking requirement, but in addition to the Spotify membership, also comes with a Netflix membership ($13.99) a Lounge Key membership, as well as 10% staking rewards. Some might argue me on this, but I'll value the Lounge Key membership as $30 a month. Comparable lounge memberships (like Priority Pass) for example go for $429 a year, but no one (or at least no one should) pays that price and there's plenty of other rewards credit cards in there that throw in a ton of benefits lounge access for $400 a year annual fee. In addition, this really depends on the person because if you utilize the lounge several times a month your getting much more value than $30 a month. Anyways, for simplicity sake, keeping the same 1-month time frame for a $4000 stake in the Crypto.com Defi Wallet app:
The net interest on the Crypto.com Defi Wallet app comes out to $42.67. Now for comparison with the Royal Indigo/Jade Green. For the 10% staking rewards you get for this tier of card alone, for a one month term this comes out to:
The $31.90 interest + $12.99 Spotify membership + $13.99 Netflix membership + $30 Lounge Key Access = $88.88. Finally plugging this total in the APY calculator produces:
26.38% is significantly below the Ruby card's 46.74%, but arguably, it's still not bad. Now I'm not going to go into as much detail for the other cards, but for each higher tier the staking requirements increase by a factor of 10 for each tier. And if I'm doing math in my brain right, this would mean that in order for the benefits to be relatively the same, the benefits for each tier would also need to increase by a factor of 10 to keep up. Now does this happen? I would actually argue no, I mean the $50 Expedia or $100 Airbnb reimbursements are nice, but they certainly don't increase the benefits by a factor of 10, unless...I don't know, you really think this crap in their welcome package is worth that much.
So what's the verdict?
From a pure APY standpoint, I think it's pretty clear that the Ruby card is the sweet spot that will give you the best returns. I'm thinking if you truly have that much money to stake, this isn't the best place to do so. In my opinion, it'd make much more sense to invest heavily in IDOs. That being said, I'm not very knowledgeable of the Crypto.com private benefits, so please feel free to let me know if you think I'm wrong.
Did I miss anything? More hidden benefits in this convoluted reward system? And also, if you're not a member of Crypto.com, then feel free to help me out and use my referral link: https://platinum.crypto.com/r/xya2fj7g7a to get you $25 worth of CRO for signing up.
