I wrote in my most recent post about the slashed benefits for crypto.com cardholders. At the time of writing my article, the company had already partially backed down and still included some staking rewards for the mid-higher card tiers, after their initial plan was to cut them off entirely.
But here comes another update, with more concessions made to the mob. That's how they feel at least, even if they talk about community and listening to feedback.
It's not the first time I have had this feeling from them. That they push it to the limit, and then they back down under pressure.
Now, there are two ways one can see this. That they needed the proposed cut benefits, in which case they are running at a loss, or they are pushing to the limit to see how much opposition they get and then they negotiate their way out of the situation by backing down (in appearance) to a level they considered sustainable in the first place. And the community feels like they won the battle by making them back down, while they still have lower benefits than before.
The second option would be very much like what politicians do.
So, what did the mob (including myself) get this time around?
1. Revised Reduction of CRO Rewards
Compared to the initially proposed reductions, both tiers get an additional 0.5% CRO rewards for the active stake. Royal Indigo / Jade Green loses 0.5% CRO rewards when they have no stake (which is a good tradeoff for me, not sure about others).
Midnight Blue, the tier with no staking required, still doesn't get any CRO rewards.
Compared to before the proposed changes, all three tiers will still lose 1% off of their CRO rewards. Higher tiers will lose more though.
2. Cardholders Who Have an Active Stake by the End of May Will Continue to Earn Rewards at the Current Rates
This works for people who already have active stakes or those who decide to stake in the meantime, until the end of May.
It also works if you want to upgrade to a higher tier, or if you unstake and restake to the same tier, but not if you restake to a lower tier.
Pay attention, if you want to unstake and restake to the same tier, tier levels are in USD, and CRO price is waay down!
After the initial decision that left no room to maneuver (only existing active stakes still benefited from current rates), this one introduces more flexibility, but the result is the same, only postponed by a few months.
3. Free Card Reissuance
This one is important for anyone wanting to upgrade their card to a higher tier because the reissuance fee is $50. They are currently waiving this fee temporarily.
They also updated their blog post.
I used screenshots from the email they sent out to customers.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I'm so happy that I didn't go into Crypto card when I was considering which one to choose... I have a Wirex card for ages, but they play dirty also... You get WXT tokens for using the card, and when you collect X amount, you can exchange them for EUR, for example... but... After every exchange, for the next exchange, you need literally double X amount?!?! And that's annoying as soon I will need like a year to be able to do the swap...
I dream about a DeFi debit card one day... or, just paying directly from crypto wallet to merchant with a QR code... I hope we will get there soon...
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Thanks for this feedback on Wirex, his token has been performing well lately and I've heard about it.
You are welcome! With the thing with raising the limits for exchange, in a certain way, they are keeping those tokens "locked"... and on the other side, "blackmail" users to keep their funds with them to reach that limit...
Also, internal exchange fees are too high...
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
thanks for the clarification. !BEER
View or trade
BEER.Hey @ph1102, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @stefano.massari for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.Yeah, it doesn't sound better. I can top up my card any time I want with my CRO rewards, even after receiving less than 1$ worth of CRO. And they will be exchanged to EUR.
I hope to see something like that too, someday. But I don't expect it very soon.
Well, it is possible in certain parts of the world... I don't know if you know this guy, but I like his funny videos... He visited El Salvador a few months ago and these are his impressions... (Check it out when you have free time... his other videos are more fun, but I like that he did this one...)
That was an interesting video. I was wondering how well-adopted bitcoin is in El Salvador. I think the problem is bitcoin doesn't scale. It's not made for commerce, even if everything goes through lightning nodes. We'll have to see what the future reserves for us.
Agree with you about scaling, but solutions like that in the video aren't bad at all... I know, it's centralized, but still, it's a big step forward... I suppose we will have more "transitional" solutions before finding the final one...
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Centralized and based on lightning nodes, most likely, because he made a few very small transactions. And even then you saw there was at least a case of a stuck transaction, plus the ATM that didn't work. You can't spend even 2 minutes, not to mention half an hour or more near a merchant to see if the transaction went-through.
I have the ruby one but never used it as I don't live in a country with pounds/euro or usd currency. I was actually planning on exploring using it in Spain soon. But when I read about this change I wondered if this was going to happen ever :) lol
I got lucky with my stake because I staked 1000 at the time CRO was very low (cost me 80 bucks I think) so I'm in the profit anyway, but never got to use the card eventually because of currency issues. I still benefit from the old tier stuff though as they changed the ruby needs to a higher number of CRO not long after I got the card :) lol..
I assume that they will adjust it at some point though.
What currency issues? I don't live in a EUR country either, but conversion is made at the interbank rate with zero fees as far as I know. It might not be profitable for the first tier to use it, hmm, maybe not even ruby after the new CRO reward levels. At 2% as I'll have on my tier after they are updated, I think it's still profitable. Plus, if the national currency depreciates more than the euro, it's better to keep some funds topped up on the card and use them for purchases, regardless of the CRO rewards.
Right now, as long as you keep your CRO staked and don't unstake it, you will keep your tier benefits no matter of the price fluctuations of CRO. But we never know what the future will bring us.
You don't have to live in a Euro country, but either your currency on the card is EUR/USD or pounds. And here in Hungary you pay EXTREMELY high fees. I have dealt with that issue a lot with our Hungarian account, and I was SO happy with Revolut because of it :)
It makes absolutely no sense to move money to a card in a currency you don't use unless you have free exchange rates like with Revolut. There's no benefit using Crypto.com card over revolut metal :) I also get a cashback from using metal and I have free exchange rates so I can leave all my EUR income in Euro and freely swap it, as well as take out 1000 euro worth from the ATM every month. If you try that with a local bank account, you pay insane fees :( even in their own currency.
Is it something Hungarian banks are doing?
I have zero exchange fees on Crypto.com card transactions in Romania 99% of the time. I think once or twice a different rate than the interbank rate was used and I was instantly notified. And it was something like 0.5% for those transactions.
I have a Revolut card too, but not metal, and haven't used it much. I didn't like that you couldn't send crypto to any wallet when I checked that option, back in the day.
I don't know how it is nowadays in other countries, but I know it was a huge shock when I came from Spain to here as well as comparing it to Dutch banks. BUT I also know that over time (the past years) I saw the banking fees from my Dutch account rise a lot too and therefore totally closed it and went 100% revolut :)
If you fill in a form here you can have 1x 150k forint cash withdrawal with your own bank for free, but at the time we had to pay our rent in cash, so that didn't even cover our rent for the month and therefore it was just shit using any ATM with our local bank. I remember in Holland you could take money from your own bank 250 euros a day without cost from the ATM.
The crypto wallets in revolut don't allow you to send or receive it btw, I used to think that too but it's simply buy/hold/sell only. Still all the benefits are well worth the 12 euros compared to our Hungarian banking fees, even without using the local bank we pay almost the same in fees (we could not close it before as the bank didn't correctly close the credit card account yet, but that's another story lol)
I will re-evaluate the crypto.com card when I'm in Spain. I hope I see it fit for use though as I've been holding it for so long now.
Looks like you have quite a history with them. I closed one of my bank accounts here for the same reason of increasing fees. It was a Dutch bank, btw. They introduced a maintenance fee which was unacceptable for the idle account I had at them (had it more for backup).
One more reason for us not to like banks I guess.
Was it the ING by any chance? Their fees were very reasonable when we left Holland but I have seen them rise every year to the point where it made no sense to keep the accounts.
I really hope that in Spain we don't have to get a "regular" bank for anything because I'm honestly quite fed up sponsoring banks :) lol
Well that should ease the pain a little, nice follow up btw
Yeah, I'm back at the rates I had with my previous tier. :)
Sure, I still have that 4% staking rewards and 100% reimbursements for netflix, which I haven't used.
I think they will still reduce over time and it's kind of similar to how outrage works against the companies. They roll it back and slowly lower the changes so people don' react as badly.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Yeah, we might see them reduced further in the future.
Crypto.com seems like it hasn't been making its users happy lately, but it will be the official sponsor of the 2022 World Cup, this could give it good visibility towards the end of the year
Oh, so that's where the money went? :) They have a huge userbase already, comparable with Binance I believe.
Thanks for the update. I think this is one of those things that is going to be changing a lot for a while. They have to get everything figured out.
Yeah, it seemed like an unprepared move.
Your content has been voted as a part of Encouragement program. Keep up the good work!
Use Ecency daily to boost your growth on platform!
Support Ecency
Vote for new Proposal
Delegate HP and earn more