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Foris DAX Asia Pte. Ltd. (operating as Crypto.com)
Crypto.com runs a cryptocurrency exchange and app where people buy, sell, and hold digital coins, and it also offers cards and financial services built around crypto.
Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange and app. It gives people a place to buy, sell, and hold digital coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and it wraps that trading engine in a slick consumer app that also handles payments, a wallet, and a Visa card that lets you spend crypto at ordinary shops.
The core business is simple to state. The company earns money mainly from trading fees when customers buy and sell, plus spreads and other service charges, and it makes more from institutional clients who need deep liquidity and trading tools. Retail users pick it for the easy app, the card perks like cashback, and the wide coin selection; institutions come for execution and custody. It competes with big exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance, and the whole sector rises and falls with crypto prices and regulatory mood. Its most famous marketing move was buying the naming rights to the Los Angeles Lakers' arena in 2021, which put the brand on a building for 20 years in a deal reportedly worth $700 million. That kind of spending is a reminder that this is a business fueled by crypto cycles: when prices and trading volumes boom, revenue and marketing budgets boom with them, and when the market freezes, both shrink fast.
The company, formerly called Monaco, is headquartered in Singapore and remains privately held. Its future hinges on regulation, since crypto exchanges face tightening rules in the US, Europe, and Asia, and on whether it can convert its consumer brand into a durable, trusted financial platform rather than a bet that only pays off in a bull market.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Citadel Securities put about $400 million into Crypto.com, the first big outside investor in a decade
- 2% Citadel Securities stake
- 98% Other owners and founders
Until July 2026, Crypto.com was owned almost entirely by its founders, with no big financial firm holding a direct stake. Citadel Securities, the market maker founded by Ken Griffin, paid about $400 million for a piece that values the whole company at around $20 billion. That works out to roughly 2 percent. For a beginner, the lesson is simple: the app runs on trading fees and cards, and now a Wall Street giant has a bet on those fees growing. Source: Revenue Memo, data from 2026
Timeline
Four Founders Build a Crypto Card
In 2016, four founders started a company in Hong Kong called Monaco. Their big idea was simple: a debit card and an app that let people spend and trade cryptocurrency like normal money. Kris Marszalek, one of the founders, ran the company as CEO. The problem they were solving was that crypto was hard to actually use in daily life, and they wanted to fix that.
Monaco Becomes Crypto.com
Two years after starting, the company bought the Crypto.com domain and renamed itself after it. That name change was a big deal, because it turned a small startup called Monaco into a brand people around the world would recognize. The company was no longer just a card app; it now carried the name of crypto itself.
A Hack and a Crash
In early 2022, hackers stole about fifteen million dollars in Ether from the company. It paused withdrawals, then paid customers back and restored service. Later that same year, the crypto market slumped and the collapse of FTX shook the whole industry, and Crypto.com's own Cronos token lost roughly a billion dollars in value. It was a hard year that tested whether the company could keep customers' trust.
The SEC Walks Away
After regulators sent warnings and then filed a lawsuit in 2024, the company spent months under a legal cloud. In March 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission closed its investigation without taking any action. The fight was over, and the company could move forward without that threat hanging over it.
A Cyprus License Opens Europe
In May 2025, Crypto.com bought a Cyprus-based firm called A.N. Allnew Investments to get a MiFID license. That license let it offer securities, derivatives and CFDs across the European Economic Area. In plain terms, it was no longer just a crypto app; it could now sell regulated investment products across much of Europe.
MiCA Approval via Malta
Earlier that same year, the company got in-principle MiCA approval and became a MiCA-authorized crypto service provider through its Malta entity. This let it offer regulated crypto services across more than thirty European jurisdictions using one approval. Europe was becoming a place where the company could grow under clear rules instead of guesswork.
Exchange Adds Real-World Perpetuals
In 2026 the global exchange pushed into perpetual contracts tied to real-world assets. It started with commodities and US index contracts, then added pre-IPO contracts referencing OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX, and later equity contracts on Tesla, NVIDIA and Apple. By then it had built a book of roughly ninety contracts flagged as equities, equity indices, commodities and pre-IPO. The company was moving from crypto-only trading toward a broader marketplace.
OCC Grants Trust Charter
In February 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave conditional approval for a national trust bank charter. This was a first step toward becoming a federally regulated custodian in the US. In simple words, it was a path to holding assets under the watch of a top American regulator, which is a big sign of maturity for a crypto company.
A Twenty Billion Dollar Valuation
By July 2026, the company reached a reported valuation of twenty billion dollars. The round was led by Citadel Securities, with CapitalG and other investors joining in. For a company that started as a small Hong Kong startup with a debit card idea, that was a remarkable place to land.