Digital currencies are on everyone's lips.

The current crisis surrounding the FTX stock exchange and the general uncertainty in the industry are palpable.

One bitcoin has cost less than $16,000 at times this week.

But especially at this time, in the highly controversial football World Cup in Qatar, Crypto.com advertising can be found on many boards - row in row with global brands such as Qatar Airways, Adidas or Coca-Cola.

The company has also been represented in Formula 1 for some time and draws attention to itself with advertising on Aston Martin's cars.

Franz Nestler

Editor in Business.

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Who is behind this sponsor?

The crypto exchange claims to be the fastest growing app on the market.

Founded six years ago, the exchange already has 70 million users.

Today's boss Kris Marszalek is one of the co-founders, along with Bobby Bao, Rafael Melo and Gary Or. Incidentally, the similarity in name to Wirecard fraudster Jan Marsalek is purely coincidental.

The company is based in Singapore, but the parent company is registered in Malta.

The country has attracted many companies in the industry with its crypto-friendly regulation, including FTX rival Binance.

Basketball is also sponsored

Formula 1 and the soccer World Cup are by no means over for Crypto.com.

In the United States, they bought the naming rights to the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team's home ground, now called Crypto.com Arena.

The company was even interested in the Champions League: the stock exchange was ready for Gazprom when the contract with the Russian gas giant was terminated – the company wanted to pay half a billion dollars for it.

Eventually there were concerns about the licenses in the UK and Italy, so the deal didn't go through.

Hard calculations are behind the active commitment to sports.

It is no coincidence that so-called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), a kind of digital collector's cards, are currently appearing.

Like a Panini album in digital, only the store is a lot bigger.

And these NFTs are supposed to be traded on Crypto.com.

Own digital currency collapsed

This approach is a risky bet because it is ultimately based on the hope that many people will be interested in these NFTs and willing to pay a steep price for them.

But at the latest after the FTX bankruptcy, doubts about such business models, including that of Crypto.com, are increasing.

According to the major bank JP Morgan, at least the capital outflows should be particularly strong compared to the crypto competition.

The in-house Cronos digital currency fell from $0.1267 to as low as $0.05691 – significantly more than other digital currencies.

In contrast to the insolvent stock exchange FTX, however, the in-house currency is not deposited as security for customer funds.

The JP Morgan analysts therefore expect that the uncertainty and the capital outflow will continue for weeks.

So the prospects are not good if millions are also flowing into sports sponsorship.

At least Crypto.com tried to provide some transparency in the business.

30 percent of its reserves are therefore in the oldest digital currency Bitcoin.

This is reasonably stable in value, but not quite: since the FTX bankruptcy, the currency rate has collapsed from around $22,000 to less than $16,000 – a drop of around 27 percent.

And the second largest position is the cryptocurrency Shiba Inu, which actually started as a satire on digital currencies.

doubts remain

The size of the position is surprising as the Shiba Inu only ranks 15th among the largest digital currencies.

Crypto.com then published further wallet addresses on which digital currencies are located in order to establish the necessary trust.

It remains to be seen whether that will be enough to counteract a large-scale withdrawal of capital.

CEO Marszalek, however, emphasizes that "withdrawals work as usual".

But many doubts remain.

For example, 400 million dollars were recently sent to another crypto exchange – an accident, as it was then called.

Such an oversight was also a transfer of 10 million dollars, although only 100 dollars were to be withdrawn - which, however, was only noticed months later.

If you consider the consequences of such mistakes, it is not surprising that customer funds have disappeared from the insolvent crypto exchange FTX.

To make matters worse, there are internal supervision problems that led to the recent Champions League negotiations being broken off.

The financial regulator Bafin is currently examining whether the company is even allowed to become active in Germany and solicit customers.

The Austrian financial supervisory authority FMA even took action against the company because of the lack of licenses.