Crypto.com lowers rewards on new CRO lockups
Crypto.com will reduce annual rewards on new CRO lockups on Thursday, with cuts of 25% or more depending on the tier. According to Protos, the new rates take effect on September 10. Rewards for Obsidian/Private tier holders will fall to 6% from 9%, Icy/Rose/Private will drop to 5% from 8.5%, and Jade/Indigo/Pro will be reduced to 3% from 4%.
The publication describes the cut as another turn in a much longer pattern of shifting terms for holders of Crypto.com’s in-house token. In its telling, Crypto.com and its predecessor Monaco have repeatedly changed roadmaps, promotions, and token-related expectations over the years. Protos says previous guidance has been reversed, payouts have been reduced, and retail token holders have absorbed costs while institutional partners benefited.
The report also links CRO’s token supply expansion to the campaign described as making America the world capital of crypto, saying retail investors were made to endure triple-digit supply inflation as part of that effort.
CRO price performance and Cronos rollback
Protos says CRO has fallen 75% over the past 12 months. It adds that after roadmap changes, expired promotions, layoffs, and other setbacks, the token has been in decline since November 2021 and still trades 93% below its all-time high from almost five years ago.
On the infrastructure side, the report says Crypto.com’s Cronos blockchain erased a few hours of activity on the day of publication, raising more questions about basic uptime.
From Monaco’s whitepaper onward, the terms kept changing
Protos traces the history back to Monaco, the company that later became Crypto.com. Monaco originally issued MCO, the token that was later migrated to CRO. Under the early design, MCO was tied to an asset contract funded by a 1% fee on certain Monaco Card transactions. Holders were also supposed to be able to burn MCO in exchange for a proportional claim on that asset contract, a structure intended to create redemption value linked to revenue.
By late 2017, Monaco had removed that asset contract from its roadmap, citing regulatory changes. It raised Monaco Card cashback to as much as 2% as a separate form of compensation, but the original token-economic promise was no longer in place.
On November 20, 2018, Crypto.com announced 60 monthly CRO airdrops for eligible MCO holders, a schedule that was meant to run for five years. Those airdrops ended early in June 2019, roughly seven months into the plan, and the remaining allocation was redirected. That meant more than 50 of the promised monthly distributions never arrived.
In 2020, Crypto.com pushed MCO holders to migrate their blockchain contracts to CRO, then stopped supporting unswapped MCO across its product suite. MCO remained on Ethereum in technical terms, but the company-backed utility attached to it was gone.
Card cashback and benefits were cut over time
Crypto.com reduced card cashback rates in May 2022 and at first planned to eliminate card staking rewards entirely once 180-day terms expired. After user backlash, it brought back smaller rewards within days and let existing users keep their previous rates until expiration.
The benefits kept shrinking. Protos notes that in 2020, Crypto.com advertised Airbnb, Expedia, and Amazon Prime rebates for its highest card tiers. By 2025, the company said those vendors would be removed from reward programs for Icy, Rose, and Obsidian tier users.
It also eliminated 1% and 2% non-staking spending rewards for cards issued before November 6, 2024.
Lounge access followed the same path. In September 2025, Crypto.com restricted the perk to customers with an active CRO lockup, stake, or annual subscription. This month, it halved annual visits for Pro users and removed complimentary guest access from Private tiers in most markets.
The 70 billion CRO burn was later matched by a re-mint plan
Protos presents the biggest reversal as the move to undo a major supply burn. In February 2021, Crypto.com announced and began carrying out a 70 billion CRO burn, calling it a step toward full decentralization.
In 2025, Cronos, which the report describes as aligned with Crypto.com, outlined a plan to re-mint those 70 billion CRO into a Strategic Reserve. In effect, that would fully reverse the earlier burn.
Against that backdrop, Thursday’s cut to rewards on new CRO lockups extends a pattern of changing terms that Protos says CRO holders have faced for years.
