By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 16th, 2024
The domain whose value drastically increased in proportion to the cryptos boom has been bought out by a crypto-spending card project Monaco.
Crypto.com was in first registered in 1993 by Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. Obviously back then hardy anyone was able to foresee the emerging of an entire financial sector dedicated to digital coins of the same name in somewhat 25 years. Blaze had picked such a domain purely out of his passion to cryptography and until now, it was nothing but another website.
Yet given the recent explosion in the world of cryptocurrency, Blaze’s website has drawn a lot of attention from crypto enthusiasts all over the world, as companies and individuals involved into the sphere vigorously want to get such an easy-spelling domain. It is not a coincidence that such sheer demand causes a quadrupled value of Crypto.com. However, despite numerous attempts to acquire the priceless domain, for a long period of time Blaze has been turning down all the offers saying his website is not for sale.
Nonetheless, Monaco, a cryptocurrency-based project focused on providing innovative financial services to cryptocurrency holders, has finally found the right price tag and become the proud owner of Crypto.com. The details of a signed deal are kept in secret, but there are rumors going around a 10$-million worth of the domain.
Monaco CEO, Kris Marszalek stated that the deal was not only about money, if it were Blaze would have sold it a long time ago. In addition, he also said:
“This is a very powerful identity that we are taking on. It’s representative of the entire category so it comes with a huge responsibility on us to carry the torch. We don’t take it lightly and this is one of the things that I think we conveyed successfully, that, as a company, we do have a higher purpose to accelerate the wider adoption of cryptocurrency.”
Until now it seems like the project is truly committed to “carry the torch” lighting a cryptocurrency world. The Monaco project finished its ICO in June 2017 with the company raising over $26.7 million through one of the most successful Token Sale events to date. Fast forward today and Marszalek said the firm has close to $200 million on its balance sheet thanks to a surge in the valuation of cryptocurrencies like Ether, but he suggested that, more than money, the sale was about finding the right home for the domain.
The splashy purchase of the domain is part of a rebrand for Monaco that will see the parent company become Crypto.com and its Monaco services including the upcoming Visa card, peer-to-peer transfer and a wallet app are going to become MCO alike the company’s native token, which participates in the fees and reward system of the crypto card.
The news of the first batch of long-awaited VISA cards boosted the MCO market price, which is up nearly a net 50% this past week. According to data from CoinMarketCap.Com, MCO has climbed to a $8.52 mark from earlier lows of $4.60, but trading volumes remain relatively weak.
Although the first testing was successful, Monaco does not plan to make the cards publicly available for the new few months. The MCO team reportedly has plans to roll out into the U.S. market as 2018 comes to a close.