Crypto.com review

What Crypto.com is

Most people know the Visa card. For futures traders, the licence map is more important. In Dubai, a Crypto.com company holds a VARA licence. That licence covers crypto derivatives. In the EU, Crypto.com holds a MiCA authorisation from the Malta regulator.

MiCA does not cover derivatives. Crypto.com blocks derivatives in 84 places (geo-restriction list). The list includes the US, the UK, Singapore and most EU states. A spot licence in a country does not open perps there.

Crypto.com was founded in 2016. It got its consumer reach through major sports deals. One of them is a $700 million Arena naming rights deal in Los Angeles. It also has a Visa prepaid card that pays crypto cashback on everyday purchases. The app and card got over 80 million users.

In raw volume, the exchange side is smaller than Binance, Bybit, or OKX. But the setup is real. It has 200-plus perpetual pairs and 100x max leverage on the BTCUSD perpetual. It also has an OTC desk for block trades and pro API access. See Crypto.com's current open interest and volume on PerpFinder.

Fees in detail

In February 2026, Crypto.com launched an upgraded VIP Program. The program joins spot and futures fee tiers into one set. Users can get a tier in three ways. The first is 30-day spot volume. The second is 30-day futures volume. The third is the CRO token balance held on the exchange. Tiers update every day.

Base futures fees start at 0.02% maker and 0.04% taker. These rates apply to USDT-margined perpetual contracts. At higher VIP levels, taker fees go down toward 0.015%. Traders get these levels through futures volume or CRO balance.

With the joined program, CRO holdings alone can give a trader VIP status. That trader then gets lower futures fees with no separate volume level.

VIP tier examples:

• Default: 0.02% maker, 0.04% taker
• VIP 1 (CRO staked or $500k 30d volume): 0.015% maker, 0.035% taker
• VIP 3+: further reductions toward 0% maker

Take a $10,000 BTC/USDT round-trip at market. The base taker cost is $8.00. At the same base rates, that is below Binance ($10.00), Bybit ($11.00), and OKX ($10.00). The 0.04% taker rate is strong.

Some older reviews cite 0.055%, but those figures pre-date the February 2026 VIP Program restructure. Use the PerpFinder fee calculator to test your exact tier and position size.

At each VIP tier, CRO token holdings can take the place of volume. Some traders prefer to hold an exchange token and not chase volume marks. For them, this path to lower fees is more open than Binance's BNB program.

Security and proof of reserves

Crypto.com publishes Proof of Reserves. Mazars Group verified it under ISRS 4400, with Merkle-tree balance checks. On the PoR portal, users can check that their balance is in the reserve snapshot. On 2026-09-26 the page still named the snapshot of 2022-12-07 as the latest.

No major exchange-level breach has occurred since the founding in 2016. In January 2022, thieves took $34 million from about 400 user accounts. The theft was first attributed to unauthorized activity. Crypto.com covered all affected users. It also made 2FA mandatory for all withdrawals.

The theft used account-level access only. It was not an exchange-level hot wallet breach. In the 2022 bear market, several rivals with earn products had liquidity crises. The company stayed solvent through that period.

Purely offshore exchanges do not have external checks on their derivatives business. The VARA licence adds those checks for Crypto.com.

Leverage and pairs

Crypto.com has over 200 perpetual futures pairs. Max leverage is 100x on the BTCUSD perpetual. Funding on that contract settles every hour. The list includes major assets and key altcoins.

But the list is shorter than Bybit at 400+, OKX at 300+, or Gate.io at 1,700+. The exchange lists both cross-margin and isolated-margin modes per position.

The DeFi wallet connects to DeFi protocols without a third-party wallet app. OKX has a similar built-in Web3 layer. With Crypto.com Pay, users can spend from the Visa card at retail shops. No other exchange on this list has built consumer payment tools at this scale.

Crypto.com designed the interface for users who came from the consumer app. It did not design it for a futures-first background. Order types are market, limit, stop-market, and stop-limit. Advanced types like iceberg and TWAP are not available. OKX and Phemex have them.

How it compares

In PerpFinder's daily snapshot on 2026-09-04, Crypto.com's 24-hour perp volume was 1.0% of Binance's. That figure is one dated observation, not a trend. Spreads on BTC and ETH perps are usable for mid-size retail positions under $100k notional. Below the top 20 assets by market cap, open interest gets thin fast.

On the base numbers, Crypto.com is the cheapest of the licensed majors. It costs $8.00 per $10k round-trip. The cost is $10.00 at Binance and OKX and $11.00 at Bybit. At standard tier, the 0.04% base taker rate is the lowest among the major licensed exchanges.

Some traders think of Crypto.com as consumer-only. For them, the fee edge and the VARA derivatives licence make it worth a serious look. Run your scenarios at the cost comparison tool.

Who Crypto.com is for

Traders in Dubai who want a VARA-licensed derivatives venue: the Crypto.com licence there covers crypto derivatives. Traders in the UK, Singapore, the US and most EU states cannot trade Crypto.com derivatives. Check the geo-restriction list before you open an account.

Consumer crypto users who already hold CRO for the Visa card or app rewards: with the joined VIP Program, those CRO holdings alone cut futures fees. They need no separate volume level.

Traders who need the largest altcoin futures list, advanced order types, or the lowest base fees with no exchange token: Bybit and OKX are a better fit. For on-chain perps with no custody risk, Hyperliquid has a lower base taker fee. It also shows all trades in the open.