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A Closer Look at Crypto.com’s Surprisingly Robust NFT Platform
The NFT space is evolving at a rapid pace, and one of those changemakers is Crypto.com. Their NFT platform was launched in March of 2021, and has been on a path of nonstop growth ever since.
The most striking thing about their NFT marketplace is how seamlessly it works with everything else in the Crypto.com ecosystem. Like most other NFT platforms, the first thing to be sold on the site was digital artwork. It does appear that Crypto.com is trying to differentiate itself from other competitors in several notable ways, however. Most apparent is their selection of artists, and their promotional NFTs.
Let us dig in to find out how Crypto.com has to offer in the NFT space.
Promotional NFTs
If you’ve ever used any of Crypto.com’s products (App, DeFi Wallet, Exchange), then you will notice that they’re all perfectly integrated with each other. Their NFT platform is no exception. If you want to buy NFTs with your DeFi Wallet, or App, or VISA Debit card, the NFT marketplace makes this simple for you to accomplish.
Now, Crypto.com has taken its integrated set of applications one step further. They offer promotional NFTs as part of a variety of campaigns.
Crypto.com Surprise Boxes
I’m not sure if Crypto.com came up with this idea, but they certainly put some gas behind it! If you were browsing the crypto corner of the internet during the month of June, then you were likely served an advertisement for Crypto.com’s 5th-anniversary mystery box. All boxes are NFTs, and each one is a winner. They gave away hundreds of thousands of their signature token CRO, as well as the grand prize of 1 BTC. If you didn’t want to claim the prize, you retained the ability to sell the box on the NFT marketplace. All boxes were bought for $10 each but were eventually sold for upwards of $50 on the secondary marketplace.
The campaign was so successful that Crypto.com decided to cash in on all the canine hype throughout the cryptoverse. Their second set of surprise boxes was DOGE and SHIB themed, aptly named Pawfect Mystery Boxes. Again, each box went for $10, and every box was a winner. I have a feeling that Crypto.com was simply testing the waters to see if there was viability in making these events a regular occurrence. In both campaigns, there were a limited number of boxes for sale. The boxes all sold out in an hour. For some reason, each user was able to buy 5 boxes each. This severely limited the ability for a wide range of people to buy their fair share of boxes.
Crypto.com Poker Cards
The latest version of this campaign has a playing card theme. Just your classic deck of 52 cards, turned into NFTs. But Crypto.com knows how to build hype for their campaigns. They’re starting off with only releasing cards of the suit of diamonds. Later they will release hearts, clubs, and spades.
The people who gather the best poker hand will win prizes from a pool of more than $100k worth of CRO. But unlike the mystery boxes which are useless after the campaign ends, the cards are going to be used to play future games. So there is an incentive to get more cards, and hang onto them for the future release of suits. Immediately after the sale, the cards started selling for much more than the purchase price. For example, the Ace of Diamonds minimum price is $80, eight times more than the purchase price of the mystery box containing the card in the first place.
High-Quality Art
Crypto.com’s NFT platform is not like opensea or other open NFT platforms that allow anyone to create and sell NFTs. The platform seems to be federated and reserved for only the most talented creators. One of the first notable creators on the platform was Snoop Dog himself, releasing signature tracks only to users of Crypto.com. Then there is the artwork of Atlas, a creator of digital worlds.
One of the qualms I have with other NFTs on the internet is their quality. There does seem to be a lot of junk being minted on other blockchains. But you can tell from the kind of art being listed on Crypto.com that there is a zero-tolerance policy for spam. Another artist JCWorks is a 19-year-old who creates NFTs of mystical landscapes. Time, thought, and effort went in to producing this sort of art, which I think is a primary criterion for making it as a creator on Crypto.com. I recommend checking out Davansh, rbnks, and morysetta.
Create Your Own NFTs on Crypto.org
Although you might not be able to create and sell NFTs on Crypto.com’s NFT platform, you can still create NFTs on Crypto.org. Their blockchain is open for any and all to use. It is extremely cheap to create NFTs on Crypto.org, costing far less than a fraction of a penny. If you’re used to paying tens or hundreds of dollars for NFTs on Ethereum then Crypto.org might be a platform that you want to check out. You can easily create NFTs through the Crypto.org desktop wallet.
The problem with this is you cannot currently move your NFTs to any platform to sell them, not even the official Crypto.com NFT platform. You will have to wait for some independent company to build and create the Crypto.com equivalent of opensea. It is not outside the realm of possibility to think that Crypto.org based NFTs will one day be supported on opensea. No official statement on this has been offered by opensea at this time.
Crypto.com Positioning Themselves as the Do-All Platform
CryptoVantage has been following Crypto.com closely since they began their march to mass adoption in 2017. The years 2020/2021 in particular are big years as they launched their exchange, blockchain, and now their NFT platform.
As more novel phenomena emerge from the cryptoverse, you can bet on Crypto.com jumping on the opportunity to capture market share. It appears they are positioning themselves as the do-all platform, making a strong case for the possibility of having its userbase never leave their set of apps.
