Paxos

What Paxos Is and the Problem It Solves

Paxos was founded in 2012 by Charles Cascarilla and Rich Teo to address a persistent gap between traditional financial infrastructure and blockchain settlement: most digital asset operations lacked the regulatory standing, reserve transparency, and enterprise API layer required for institutional adoption. Rather than build a consumer product, Paxos positioned itself as the compliance and custody foundation that other companies—banks, fintechs, payment networks—plug into when they want to offer blockchain-based financial services without building regulated infrastructure from scratch.

The core thesis is that tokenized dollars and commodities only achieve mass use when they carry credible legal backing. Paxos obtained a New York Department of Financial Services limited-purpose trust charter in 2015, received approval from Singapore's Monetary Authority of Singapore for a Major Payment Institution license, and in December 2025 converted its New York charter into a national trust charter supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC charter number 25379)—one of the first blockchain-native companies to operate at the federal bank supervision level. It also holds an electronic money institution license in the EU under Finland's FIN-FSA, aligned with MiCA.

How It Works

Paxos operates as both a direct issuer and a white-label infrastructure provider.

As a direct issuer, it mints tokens against fully-segregated reserves. Each fiat-backed token is redeemable 1:1 and collateralized entirely by cash held at U.S. depository institutions and short-dated U.S. Treasury bills. Monthly reserve attestations are published by Withum, an independent accounting firm. Assets are held in accounts legally separated from Paxos's corporate balance sheet, meaning token holders retain claims even in an insolvency scenario.

As a B2B platform, Paxos exposes API-driven services that enterprises use to integrate regulated digital assets without building their own trust company. The platform covers stablecoin issuance (including white-labeling under a client's brand), crypto brokerage (white-label order routing and execution), and institutional custody via MPC wallet infrastructure. The developer surface is documented at docs.paxos.com and includes a FIX API for brokerage integrations and REST APIs for stablecoin mint-redeem operations.

Token Portfolio

USDP (Pax Dollar): Launched in September 2018 as Paxos Standard, USDP is Paxos's own-brand dollar stablecoin. Supply has contracted to roughly $32 million as of mid-2026 as Paxos shifted focus toward partner-issued tokens.

PYUSD (PayPal USD): PYUSD is the most widely held Paxos-issued token. Paxos issues it on behalf of PayPal; PayPal distributes it through its PayPal and Venmo wallets. It launched on Ethereum in August 2023, expanded to Solana on May 29, 2024—announced at Consensus 2024—and reached approximately $3.5 billion in circulating supply by mid-2026. As of April 2026, Solana holds the larger share of PYUSD supply relative to Ethereum. Paxos and PayPal supported early DeFi liquidity through LP-rewards programs on Orca and Raydium.

USDG (Global Dollar): USDG launched in November 2024 as the issuer token for the Global Dollar Network, a revenue-sharing consortium whose distribution partners include Robinhood, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, Bullish, Galaxy, and Nuvei. Unlike USDP, yield from USDG reserves is passed through to distribution partners rather than retained by Paxos.

PAXG (Paxos Gold): PAXG links each token to one fine troy ounce of physical London Good Delivery gold held in Brink's vaults. Paxos provides holders with the ability to redeem for physical bars, unallocated gold, or USD at spot. The gold is independently audited monthly by KPMG and annually by Bureau Veritas. In June 2026, Paxos expanded PAXG to Solana, citing the network's low transaction costs, rapid finality, and growing real-world asset ecosystem. On Solana, PAXG is implemented using the Token-2022 program, which enables native compliance controls at the token level—mirroring the regulatory transfer restrictions built into the Ethereum version.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Paxos's Solana presence grew from a single NYDFS approval in late 2023 permitting stablecoin issuance beyond Ethereum. USDP went live on Solana in January 2024, followed by PYUSD in May 2024 and PAXG in June 2026. All Solana-native Paxos tokens use Token-2022 to preserve the compliance controls that NYDFS and OCC supervision require—a design decision that distinguishes them from many other Solana SPL tokens.

PYUSD on Solana became significant DeFi collateral through sustained liquidity incentives, and the token's Solana supply surpassed its Ethereum supply well within two years of launch. Paxos's multi-chain expansion aligns with Solana's positioning as a high-throughput settlement layer: the combination of sub-cent transaction costs, sub-second finality, and Paxos's regulated issuance makes it practical for high-volume payment flows that would be uneconomical on Ethereum.

Security and Custody Infrastructure

In 2026 Paxos acquired Fordefi, an institutional MPC wallet provider founded in 2021 that serves nearly 300 global institutions and safeguards more than $120 billion in monthly transaction volume. Fordefi specializes in DeFi-connected custody with policy and governance controls for on-chain operations. The acquisition is intended to integrate MPC wallet infrastructure directly into Paxos's stablecoin and tokenization platform, giving enterprise clients a unified interface for issuance, settlement, and qualified custody.

Regulatory Context

The GENIUS Act, signed into U.S. law in July 2025, established a federal framework for payment stablecoins requiring 1:1 reserves in cash and short-dated Treasuries, monthly reporting, and federal or qualifying state oversight. Paxos's OCC national trust charter places it inside the approved-issuer perimeter the GENIUS Act defines, making it one of a small set of firms authorized to issue dollar-denominated payment stablecoins at institutional scale under federal supervision.

Team and Background

Paxos was co-founded by Charles Cascarilla (CEO) and Rich Teo. The company is headquartered in New York with operations in Singapore. It has operated continuously since 2012, making it one of the longer-standing regulated digital asset companies in the United States.