Crypto.com Coin Price Jumps 30%, Hits All-Time High After Lakers Arena Deal

If putting your name on a basketball arena won't raise your coin's price, nothing will. Fortunately for Crypto.com, splashing out a few hundred million on marketing still seems to be good for business, at least so far.

The price of Crypto.com Coin (CRO) has risen over 30% in the last 24 hours and has hit an all-time high of just below $0.57, according to data from CoinGecko. That beats CRO's previous record of $0.50 set on November 15. The coin's price has tripled in the past month, thanks in part to rival exchange Coinbase making CRO available for trading.

The Singapore-based exchange's $700 million deal to purchase naming rights to the Staples Center, announced last night, has accelerated the exchange-based coin's upward trajectory. The Staples Center, which opened in 1999, is home to four professional sports teams—the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA), Clippers (NBA), Sparks (WNBA), and Kings (NHL)—and frequently plays host to concerts and events such as the Grammy Awards.

The downtown L.A. venue, then, is a highly visible location for a cryptocurrency exchange looking to take on Coinbase, FTX, and Binance—and get a vast swath of Americans into trading. 

While a recent Pew Research poll found that 86% of Americans "have heard at least a little about cryptocurrencies," only 16% have ever bought or used them. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who spearheaded his exchange's $135 million purchase of the Miami Heat arena's naming rights this year, admitted to Decrypt that his firm—the second-most popular exchange in terms of combined spot and derivatives volume—was spending big on marketing because it was "behind on name recognition."

FTX Is Spending Big on Marketing Because 'We're Behind on Name Recognition': CEO

Many of FTX's recent deals, acquisitions, and partnerships have been about playing catch up, according to founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. “There’s been some user growth, but we are really coming from behind on name recognition,” Bankman-Fried said on Tuesday at the Decrypt and Yahoo Finance Crypto Goes Mainstream event. “We’ve been around for two and a half years. That’s a lot less long than some of the other big names in the crypto exchange business. When someone’s looking to get involved in...

The CRO coin is one way for Crypto.com to compete for new customers who stumble across the name, whether that's at the basketball game, on a TV when the firm's Matt Damon commercial is playing, or elsewhere. Exchange customers receive rewards in CRO, which they can then use to access services at a discount. It can also be used in decentralized finance applications to access lending, borrowing or trading services.

And, if Crypto.com makes all the right moves, it'll be used at the Staples—er, "The Crypt," too.