Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek Was in Washington, D.C. Friday to Appear at President Trump’s Inaugural White House Crypto Summit.

But while he was jet-setting to the nation’s capital to help bring crypto to the mainstream, his stakeholders were feeling forgotten.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek was in Washington, D.C. Friday to appear at President Trump’s inaugural White House Crypto Summit. But while he was jet-setting to the nation’s capital to help bring crypto to the mainstream, his stakeholders were feeling forgotten.

On March 2nd, the same day that President Trump announced plans for a national strategic crypto reserve, Cronos Labs, a subsidiary of Crypto.com and the main development team behind the Cronos blockchain, unveiled a governance proposal to reissue 70 billion CRO tokens, or 70% of the original supply, for its own “Strategic Reserve.” The re-minted tokens would restore the original supply of CRO to its original 100 billion tokens. The rationale is that Cronos Labs wants a new treasury to promote adoption of CRO, with the prime method being not only the creation of the first CRO exchange traded fund (ETF), but the first ETF ever launched by a token issuer.

As one might expect from token holders suddenly facing massive dilution—the circulating supply of CRO is now only 27 billion tokens—this proposal was met with swift and ferocious backlash. “My first thoughts: massive dilution. Selfishness from the company as nobody from the community would benefit from it,” one large token holder who wished to remain anonymous told Unchained. But even more than the economic impact of massive dilution, the proposal risks breaking one of crypto’s cardinal rules: burning tokens means they are gone forever.

For both reasons, this proposal has alienated a large and loud portion of the CRO community, whose token is down 41% in the last year and 91% from its all-time high in November 2021. Crypto.com and Cronos Labs have enough voting power in the proposal to make it pass and pursue some of its stated plans like launching an ETF. But if it mints these tokens, it risks harming its userbase and crypto’s perception of immutability, potentially withering away its intrinsic value just as it tries to sell the token to a new wave of investors.

Representatives for both Crypto.com and Cronos Labs did not respond to Unchained’s request for comment.

There is no way to simply delete crypto assets on a blockchain. After all, they are immutable. Instead, if someone wants to take tokens out of circulation, they get burned. This process involves sending tokens to an unrecoverable address. It is the equivalent of gifting tokens to a friend, who then forgets his or her private key. You can see the transaction, you can see the assets on the blockchain, but they may as well not exist.

The most common reason to burn tokens is to shrink the supply to boost the price of a token. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has an automatic burning process in which it takes a percentage of profits, buys a corresponding portion of its native token BNB on the open market, and then sends it to a burn address. In total the company has burned 254,315 units of BNB worth $141 million. In September 2021, the Ethereum network started a burning program with EIP-1559, in which fees paid by users to the network would be burned instead of being given to validators. During times of high usage the amount burned, which totals 5,173,383 ETH worth over $10 billion, outstrips rewards paid to stakers and makes the network deflationary.

But each of these programs affects only a small portion of their respective supplies of 145 million BNB and 120 million ETH. Crypto.com’s burn eliminated 70% of its supply. As far as major tokens go, this was likely the biggest burn in history—especially in terms of market capitalization percentage.

Its token holders were largely happy with the burn at the time. “I thought that was a fantastic catalyst to drive speculation to the chain,” said one CRO holder who goes by the pseudonym Blacksea. “A lot of people in the cryptocurrency space don’ गरजों के लिए एकत्रित हो रहा है, जहाँ उसका मान 0.08 $ से 0.96 $ तक बढ़ गया। (यह अब 0.08 $ तक पहुँच गया है।)

जितना महत्वपূর্ণ, উপरोক্ত উल्লিখিত BNB, ETH, এবং অন্যান্য বড় টোকেনের সম্পূর্ણ পরিমাণ, যिनका संबंध है। टोकन को उजागर करने वाले आंकड़ों के अनुसार, सभी को एकत्रित किया गया है या फिर से बनाया गया है। उद्योग के अधिकांश के लिए, यह एक घटना है जो सामूहिक रूप से "rollback" के रूप में जानी जाती है और जिसके लिए कोई भी आध्यात्मिक रूप से तैयार