I have extensively reviewed Crypto.com (CDC) cards here. Previously these cards, depending on how many of their native token (CRO) you had staked, used to earn 1% – 8%, but effectively June 1st, 2022, the cards will earn 0% – 5%. This is big change so let’s take a deep dive into it.
Cashback Rate Changes
First let’s look at the biggest change – cashback rate cuts [1] [2]:
| Card Tier | CRO Staking (in dollar) | Old Cashback Rate | New Cashback Rate |
| Midnight Blue | $0 | 1% | 0% |
| Ruby Steel | $400 | 2% | 0.5% |
| Royal Indigo / Jade Green | $4,000 (4k) | 3% | 1.5% |
| Icy White / Frost Rose Gold | $40,000 (40k) | 5% | 3% |
| Obsidian | $400,000 (400k) | 8% | 5% |
The cards that required $400 (Ruby Steel) and $4,000 (Royal Indigo / Jade Green) staking were pretty decent as they earned 2% and 3% respectively. In fact, these had good manufactured spend opportunity.
If you think you could still make 1.5% work, wait till you read the next section.
Monthly Cashback Rate Cap
Now there is a monthly cashback limit of $25 and $50 on Ruby Steel (requires $400 staking) and Royal Indigo / Jade Green (requires $4,000 staking).
There is no monthly reward cap for other tiers.
- Monthly CRO Card rewards caps are reset at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month.
- The monthly CRO Card rewards cap will be determined by your current CRO stake or current Card tier, whichever is higher.
- In the event that a user upgrades their CRO stake or Card tier in the middle of the month, the monthly CRO Card rewards cap will be updated to the higher tier.
- The following Card rewards are excluded from the calculation of the monthly CRO Card rewards cap:
- Reimbursements of relevant Card benefits, such as Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Expedia, and AirBnB
- Any bonus Card rewards as part of any promotion or market-specific Card program offering (e.g bonus Crypto.com Visa Card rewards powered by Dosh for US cardholders)
No More CRO Staking Rewards to Card Holders
CRO staking rewards will no longer be offered to Jade Green, Royal Indigo, Frosted Rose Gold, Icy White, and Obsidian cardholders from the Effective Date.
Cardholders who still have an active 6-month stake and who staked before 1 May 2022 13:00 UTC will continue to receive their CRO staking rewards until the end of their 180-day staking period.
If you’re STILL interested in CDC please consider signing up through the referral link provided below. You will “get” $25 worth of CRO upon signup. You can unlock this value by getting Ruby ($400 staking required) card or above. https://crypto.com/app/weaap29q5n
Earn Has Been Beaten to Death
CDC’s Earn program had a sweet spot if you were willing to lock your asset with them for a fixed period of time and if you were willing to stake CRO to get high enough card tier. When I first wrote the review several months ago, their Earn program had relatively attractive rates. Here is a table I grabbed from the old review:
| Coin | Midnight Blue and Ruby Steel | Royal Indigo and Jade Green | Rose Gold, Icy, and Obsidian |
| Stablecoins | 10% p.a. | 12% p.a. | 14% p.a. |
| Bitcoin (BTC) | 4.5% p.a. | 6.5% p.a. | 8.5% p.a. |
| Ethereum (ETH) | 5.5% p.a. | 6.5% p.a. | 8.5% p.a. |
| CRO | 6% p.a. | 6% p.a. | 6% p.a. |
Now, this is what the rate looks like:
| Coin | Midnight Blue and Ruby Steel | Royal Indigo and Jade Green | Rose Gold, Icy, and Obsidian |
| Stablecoins | 6% p.a. | 8% p.a. | 10% p.a. |
| Bitcoin (BTC) | 3% p.a. | 4% p.a. | 6% p.a. |
| Ethereum (ETH) | 3% p.a. | 4% p.a. | 6% p.a. |
| CRO | 6% p.a. | 6% p.a. | 6% p.a. |
You might be saying, well that doesn’t look too bad. Sure, except effective June 1st, 2022, they will put a very low cap on how much of your staked token earns full reward. To be very precise, the first $3,000 will earns full reward then the subsequent $3,000 – $30,000 earns 0.5x reward, and then afterward it is 0.3x reward [1] [2].
Here is an example of this cap being applied to Bitcoin holding:
But don’t be surprised if this cap is implemented sooner, after all they did just that last time. For reference, here is the cap they had recently introduced (effectively April 4th, 2022) [1] [2]:
- Tire 1 rates – full rates fixed-term allocation up to USD $30,000
- Tire 2 rates – 0.5x reward on fixed-term allocation that exceed USD $30,000
The limits before this were kinda insane with (I think) the highest tier earning full rate on up to a million dollar.
Closing Thoughts
Game Over. Pack up.
