Paxos is an American financial technology (“fintech”) company, established in 2012 under the name itBit. It was rebranded as Paxos in September 2016, while maintaining the name “itBit” for its cryptocurrency asset exchange. The company is based in New York City, with international offices in London and Singapore. Paxos develops and provides blockchain technology for the financial services industry. Their products include Paxos Crypto Brokerage, Stablecoin as a Service, APIs, PAX, BUSD, PAX Gold (PAXG), itBit, Automated Post-Trade for precious metals, base metals, FX markets, and Paxos Settlement Service. ^[9][11][12]

On December 17, 2020, Paxos announced the $142 million USD raised in the Series C round of funding.

Declaration Partners led the round, which included investments from PayPal Ventures, Senator Investment Group, RRE Ventures, Mithril Capital Management, Liberty Ventures, RIT Capital Partners, Ken Moelis, and Alua Capital. ^[10]

Paxos is a New York-regulated financial institution on a mission to create a global, frictionless economy. By building infrastructure to enable the movement between physical and digital assets, Paxos is creating a future where all assets, from money to commodities to securities, are digitized and can move instantaneously, anytime.

Paxos was originally founded in 2012 under the name itBit.

The goal was to attract interest from institutional investors and make trading in Bitcoin similar to a traditional currency exchange. Security was enhanced with a cryptocurrency wallet, multi-factor authentication, and DDOS attack mitigation. Identity verification was built in, as well as screening and monitoring for suspicious activity. ^[17]

The New York State Department of Financial Services issued its first charter for a Bitcoin exchange to itBit in May of 2015. The move allowed the company to accept customers in the United States, and granted a measure of legitimacy to virtual currency. The process of obtaining the charter took itBit more than a year. The company had previously been serving its foreign customers from Singapore. ^[14][18]

At the same time, the company announced it had raised $25 million in new financing, as well as the appointment of three members to its board of directors, Sheila Bair, former FDIC chairwoman, Bill Bradley, former Democratic senator from New Jersey and member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Robert H. Herz, a director of both investment banking firm Morgan Stanley and mortgage financier Fannie Mae. ^[19]

On May 6, 2015, Paxos became the first bitcoin exchange to become a trusted company, receiving a charter from the NYDFS.

In 2016, itBit was rebranded as Paxos, and the company expanded to provide services using blockchain, the technology underpinning virtual currency.

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In 2017, Paxos completed the first pilot for a new London bullion settlement service, Euroclear Blockchain. During the pilot, over 600 over-the-counter test bullion trades settled over a two-week period. Among the participants were Citigroup, INTL FCStone, MKS PAMP Group, Scotiabank, and Société Générale. Settlement of unallocated gold is a capital-intensive process, and the platform aimed to reduce costs incurred by participants through instant settlement and simultaneous delivery versus payment. ^[21][22][23]

The state of New York's Department of Financial Services authorized Paxos to trade cryptocurrencies such as Ether, Litecoin, Stellar Lumens, and Bitcoin Cash on its exchange. The announcement was made on June 14, 2018. ^[24]

In September 2018, Paxos received New York state approval to issue a stablecoin, the Paxos Standard, which is tied to the U.S. dollar in order to give it more stability. Paxos has set up relationships with traditional banks to hold U.S. Dollars. The tokens are held by the exchanges. Rather than using computers to audit the blockchain through the mining process, third-party auditors are employed to help ensure that the number of dollars held exactly matches the number of tokens issued. ^{[13][16][25][26][27]}

Paxos enables enterprises to integrate cryptocurrency buying, selling, holding, and sending capabilities into their own applications. Paxos Crypto Brokerage is a turnkey, easy-to-integrate API-based solution that provides access to the $200 billion cryptocurrency market while managing the underlying regulatory and technological complexity.

In July 2020, Revolut US was the first company to take part in Paxos Crypto Brokerage services. Revolut built and launched its crypto product using Paxos Crypto Brokerage APIs. Paxos custodies all crypto for Revolut users and provides deep liquidity. ^[15]

Paxos’ white-labeled Stablecoin as a Service offering allows partners to create their own stablecoins quickly and securely. Paxos serves as the qualified custodian of created stablecoins, ensuring fiat assets are held 1:1 in dedicated omnibus cash accounts at FDIC-insured U.S. banks or in Treasury Bills. These balances are audited every month to validate 1:1 backing. Paxos works with New York banking regulators to get formal approval for the issuance and usage of custom branded stablecoins. Their Trust status and additional licenses enable Paxos to serve customers in all U.S. states and globally.

Paxos was licensed on September 10, 2018, by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to issue a stablecoin. The coin is called Paxos Standard (PAX) is listed on over 150 exchanges, OTC desks, and wallets. PAX allows its users to instantly send and receive US dollars around the world, pay for goods and services, move instantly between dollars and crypto, and trade or hold a cryptocurrency.

Paxos and Binance announced on September 5, 2019, that Paxos would issue a New York State Department of Financial Services-approved U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin called Binance USD (BUSD). It is an ERC-20, Ethereum-based token. It will be issued and redeemable through the Paxos wallet in exchange for U.S. dollars or PAX stablecoins. Paxos will also serve as the custodian of the coin's fiat currency reserves. Besides the Paxos platform, BUSD is also available on the Binance website for trading initially against Bitcoin, Binance Coin, and XRP. BUSD is 100% backed by U.S. dollars held in FDIC-insured U.S. banks.

In July 2019, a digital asset startup called Stable Universal, which was backed by Huobi, launched a stablecoin called HUSD. The stablecoin is tradeable on the Huobi Global exchange as an alternative to Tether, according to a statement by Huobi.

PAX Gold (PAXG) is an asset-backed token where one token represents one fine troy ounce of a London Good Delivery gold bar, stored in professional vault facilities. Anyone who owns PAXG has ownership rights to that under the custody of Paxos Trust Company. Since PAXG represents physical gold, its value is tied directly to the real-time market value of that physical gold. PAXG gives customers the benefits of actual physical ownership of specific gold bars with the speed and mobility of a digital asset. Customers are able to have fractional ownership of physical bars. On the Paxos platform, customers can convert their tokens to allocated gold, unallocated gold, or fiat currency (and vice versa) quickly and efficiently, reducing their exposure to settlement risk. PAXG is also available for trading on Paxos’ itBit exchange. PAXG will also be available on other crypto-asset exchanges, wallets, lending platforms, and elsewhere within the crypto ecosystem. At any time, PAXG holders can look up the serial number, value, and physical characteristics of their vaulted gold just by entering their Ethereum wallet address on the PAXG lookup tool under PAX Gold on the Paxos Website.

itBit is a crypto-to-fiat exchange with maker rebates across all trades. itBit’s maker-taker fee model ensures that they operate with a deep liquidity pool that allows for better price discovery and a favorable trading environment for all customers. All maker orders (resting orders that add liquidity to the exchange) are eligible for rebates, and taker orders are charged fees according to the tiered approach demonstrated, based on 30-day rolling volumes (USD).

Paxos automatically calculates and verifies the payment and delivery amounts, locations, and SSIs with all counterparties. Paxos then automatically generates and sends transfer instructions to your banks, vaults, warehouses, and depositories. Cash and Precious Metals are held in the user's own account until the point of settlement, at which point they are simultaneously transferred, reducing risk. With Paxos automated post-trade services, users can:

Paxos Settlement Service is a private, permission-based blockchain network that facilitates settlement with delivery-versus-payment settlement finality.

It is the new market infrastructure that can power digital transformation and enable structural cost reduction.

On October 21, 2020, PayPal announced it had partnered with Paxos to enable the buying and selling of cryptocurrency via PayPal, and eventually Venmo, starting in 2021. Paxos will be responsible for ensuring the regulatory compliance of the new service, using its technological assets to facilitate payments, providing liquidity, and managing private keys for PayPal customers' wallets. PayPal signaled its plans to significantly increase cryptocurrency’s utility by making it available as a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.

“We think that opportunity is now, our investors think it is, too,” Paxos co-founder and CEO Charles Cascarilla told CoinDesk in an interview. “We want to really be able to put the pedal to the metal to make sure that we take advantage of that.”

Paxos raised a total of $3.3 million in Seed Funding in November 2013 with Canaan Partners and RRE Ventures being the lead investors. Digital Currency Group, Ben Davenport, and Liberty City Ventures were the other investors of the Seed Funding. Paxos raised $25M USD in Series A funding in May 2015. The investors involved in Series A funding were Solon Mack Capital, RRE Ventures, Raptor Group, Liberty City Ventures, Jay W. Jordan II, James Pallota, and Blockchain Capital. Series B round in May of 2018 raised $65,000,000 USD in funding from Liberty City Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Jay Jordan.

In December 2020, Paxos had their Series C round funding and raised $142 million to facilitate the mainstream adoption of digital assets.

rm’s efforts to provide blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure solutions to a wide range of financial institutions.

The raise will also fund a significant hiring push for the 130-person company.

“We want to double the size of our team, expand our current product solutions, and build new products that enterprises need,” Cascarilla wrote.

Series C funding was led by Declaration Partners, which included investments from: PayPal Ventures, Senator Investment Group, RRE Ventures, RIT Capital Partners, Mithril Capital Management, Liberty City Ventures, Ken Moelis, and Alua Capital.

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Paxos has raised over $240 million to date.

The Paxos team consists of CEO and co-founder Charles Cascarilla, Co-Founder & CEO Asia Rich Teo, COO Andrew Chang, Head of Strategy Walter Hessert, Chief Security Officer & Director of IT Nick Selby, General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer Daniel Burstein, and VP of Marketing & Comms Dorothy Chang. Its board of directors includes former chairwoman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Sheila Bair; former Democratic U.S. Senator William Warren "Bill" Bradley; former chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Robert H. Herz; former chairman, president, and CEO of Lotus Development Corporation Jim Manzi and former chief executive officer of the New York Stock Exchange, Duncan Niederauer.

Paxos Standard is an ERC20 token issued on the Ethereum blockchain by Paxos. Paxos's vision is to develop a global frictionless network for simple, mobile, and instant exchange of assets.

Paxos Standard, or PAX, is a token that is backed one-to-one by USD deposits.

Paxos Standard tokens are issued and redeemed by Paxos. Paxos tokens only remain in circulation as long as there are corresponding U.S. dollars being held in reserve. When PAX is redeemed for USD the tokens are immediately burned or destroyed.

As a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, Paxos Standard follows the ERC-20 protocol. Unlike fiat currencies, PAX is available 24/7 to ensure payments or exchanges of any type of asset. These include cryptocurrency, securities, and asset tokens.

Paxos Standard Token (PAX) is an ERC-20 token issued on the Ethereum blockchain.

As a stablecoin collateralized by the U.S. dollar, it brings some benefits of the blockchain technology and stability of fiat currencies together.

On top of that, every Paxos standard token is fully backed by the equivalent amount of U.S. dollars, which means it can also be redeemed for USD at any time.

Paxos Standard Token was established in the wake of the infamous Tether controversy, where the leading market stablecoin was put under serious scrutiny. Paxos burns its own tokens using an audited smart contract.

Paxos's team consists of professionals from various backgrounds, including former Wall Street and Silicon Valley employees. The company is led by its co-founder and CEO Charles Cascarilla.