The Future of CRO Looks Bright: A Full Length Breakdown

Hey all! I'm going to very informally write a quick piece showing you all why I think CRO is a great long-term investment. Typo's aren't mistakes, they're happy accidents, ok?

Full disclosure, I'm doing this purely for fun, but I do hold CRO in my bag and no I'm not shilling anyone anything. Please DYOR and handle your finances in a way that works best for YOU!

As of today, April 20th, here is the list of the top crypto centralized exchanges across all countries according to our friend CoinGecko:

Crypto.com is the 6th biggest crypto exchange across all countries.

Notes/patterns:

1. Of the 5 exchanges above them, only 3 -- Binance, Gate.io, and Coinbase -- have exchanges available to US customers. Crypto.com has just recently opened up the beta for the US exchange to whale investors. It hasn't been released to everyone. It will be launched fully later this year apparently. This shows crypto.com has very little in the way of competition and will actually be early to serving the US customer base among top rivals.
2. Of the top 10 exchanges here, Crypto.com ranks 6th, but is 7th amongst number of coins offered and 9th among pairs. This shows crypto.com is serving high trade volume, but is actually in the lower tier among coin and pair offerings. This is yet another indicator. If crypto.com ranks this high among exchange in terms of trading, once crypto.com makes more coins and pair available to be more comparative to its rivals, it should be much more attractive more traders as well.
3. Of the centralized exchanges on this list, only 2 of the companies (including crypto.com) also have a decentralized secondary blockchain for defi and everything else in web3/metaverse. The other one is Binance with its Smart Chain (BSC). We'll touch more on this below.

In summary: crypto.com is one of the top exchanges today in terms of trading volume despite it offering fewer coins and pairs and competing against competitors that already serve the massive US market.

Crypto.com is regularly adding new coins and the US exchange is expected to launch fully later this year.

Additional personal thoughts:

• For what this is worth, as someone who active in this space, I've only heard of 7/10 of these exchanges until I did this research. My pure guess is that in real life if you asked 10 people, most would only heard of none of these. If you were lucky enough to ask 2 or 3 people from those original 10 that actually knew something minimal bout crypto, my guess is they'd have only heard of Crypto.com, Coinbase and/or Binance.
• Crypto mindshare is still very small. This is a brand new space (hence the rolling thunder blanket marketing youre seeing from crypto companies right now. We're still in the point of adoption where its just beginning to enter the mainstream. The marketing is expressly for this purpose. Educating and indicting the masses to get involved in the space.
• The only competitors from the top 10 exchanges under crypto.com that I see posing a threat is FTX (which is actually a great company and service I've heard) and Kraken.

Here is another screenshot showing the current stake of the exchanges available to US customers from coingecko:

Look at the dropoff on the trust score after the top 8 exchanges. The US market is very underserved at the moment.

Notes/patterns:

1. The trustscore drops off significantly after the top 8 options. The fact that the top 10 exchanges dont all have perfect trust scores for something as valuable as crypto in the US of all places is a huge surprise.
2. While Gemini is a major player in the US there really arent many other top competitors serving the massive US market right now. This is a huge opportunity for crypto.com to get there early and build on their marketing.

Then from our friends at DeFi Lama we can see the total value locked from all chains included Crypto.com's brand new decentralized, open-source chain Cronos that just launced in November. Despite being just under 6 months old (!!) it's the 9th biggest chain by total value locked indicated in green below:

Cronos is the 8th biggest chain by Total Value Locked (TVL) despite being only about 6 months old. Dapps are going to be massive.

Notes/Patterns:

1. The Cronos chain has only been out for under 6 months is already the 9th biggest chain by TVL. This is great growth in an already crowded field. This is Crypto.com's future as it works to become more decentralized and less dependent on its centralized app and exchange for revenue. The great thing about this chain too is it exists within the cosmos network and uses the cosmosSDK meaning you can exchange your CRO between other cosmos chains and for other cosmos currencies using a technology called "IBC" (Inter-Blockchain Communication).
2. This also explains why Crypto.com slashed earn rates and switched the default network to "Cronos" when withdrawing CRO -- to further push users to Cronos and Dapps because it is the future.

Next up we have the top iphone finance apps in the US from similarweb.com:

Crypto.com is the third-ranked crypto-related app in the US Apple app store.

Notes/Patterns:

1. Crypto.com is the third-top crypto app in the finance category in the apple app store. Before anyone asks, I didn't post the Android one because the results were slightly different, but the crypto-related apps ranked the same. Both FTX and Coinbase have secondary apps for their exchange and both work in the US. Crypto.com doesnt have a live US exchange and yet its the third most downloaded crypto app in the US. This means, again, it's boding well despite having competitors with access to the US market for trading.

Next up we have the BTC price chart comparison from our friend mr. gecko from coingecko again:

Over its max life CRO has always followed BTC price action, but over the last 6 months or so since the pump, CRO has already begun to follow BTC price action very tightly.

Notes/patterns:

1. I wanted to save this for last to throw some cold water on CRO for a moment. It's easy to get hyped in all of the information available like what I've presented above, but over the last 6 months especially CRO has been very tightly pegged to BTC price action. This means that the biggest determent of CRO's price isn't big marketing events or new crypto.com feature launches, but the amount of BTC that is mined and then bought -- bitcoin's marketcap. Bitcoin is crypto biggest cryptocurrency and the more people that enter the space, the more they buy bitcoin and other coins. What this means is that the best way to increase the price of CRO is to get more people into crypto in general, hence the massive marketing push you're seeing.

This leads us to the main reason to be bullish on Crypto.com and thus CRO and Cronos blockchain: marketing.

If the main reason for price increases is marketcap of the entire crypto space ("growing the overall pie" rather than competing for existing users) then you need to attract users not only to your services, but also to the overall space with your marketing.

Crypto.com is in the best position of any company to execute on this. Not only have they easily spent the most on marketing (I don't have a source for this, but the size and quantity of their sponsorships are clearly beyond anyone else in the industry right now), but they also uniquely have the best SEO with their brand. Crypto.com is the first result that is returned when someone google's "crypto":

Crypto.com has the best brand for SEO. This drives new entrants to the space to Crypto.com first when searching for it on google.

Notes:

1. This may be anecdotal, but if you were new to the space one of the first things you're going to do is google what crypto is. Crypto.com is the first result, which drives new entrants to the space to crypto.com before any other competitor.
2. The other main way most people get involved in the space is recommendations from friends or others online. Crypto.com also has the largest consumer-facing marketing targeting spaces like the Crypto.com Arena that are high foot traffic and maximizes the amount of repeat marketing impressions with repeat sports viewing. With 94% of crypto owners being between 18-40, this age cohort aligns heavily with the marketing Crypto.com has done with the Lakers/Kings, Formula1, UFC etc., which target the same age group.

TL;DR:

• Crypto.com's US exchange is coming later this year to everyone in the US (just for big whales right now). This is very good considering the US market is very underserved with few good exchanges right now and crypto.com is one of the top exchanges internationally without even being in the US market yet.
• CRO was originally an ERC token. Then they made their own centralized crypto.org chain. They saw the future is open, decentralized chains that work well with others. So, they built the Cronos chain using the CosmosSDK so it works with cosmos, terra and all others within that ecosystem using IBC technology. This new cronos chain is the future of the company's plans because decentralized apps (Dapps) are going to be a very big industry/market in the future. Cronos has been out for about 6 months and is already the 9th biggest by total volume locked. This is good growth.
• Crypto.com is one of the most popular finance apps in the US on both Apple app store and google play store. It is the third most downloaded crypto-related app. This shows theres already lots of interest and use of its services despite not having a US exchange.
• Crypto.com's marketing is the best in the industry and is pairing its brand with things that attract the exact target audience that data shows are interested in crypto in order to capture young people as they enter this age group (sports, forumula1, basketball, hockey, NFL, football/soccer -- mainly 18-40). It also has the best search-engine optimization for people learning about crypto for the first time, which is needed to grow overall crypto marketcap for true price action.

That's all folks! Hope you enjoyed! Please do your own research before you invest. What are your thoughts?

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P.S. I just wrote this and put this together quickly, but am considering starting my own blog and doing these more seriously and offering other crypto resources and data. Would anyone be interested?