- Paxos Trust Company, LLC (Paxos) is a FinTech company that provides a regulated blockchain infrastructure platform, building a new, open financial system. [0]
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Founded in April of 2012 and organized under New York Banking Law and incorporated in New York in September of 2015. [1]
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They are a multinational company with presense that spans three global financial capitals New York City, Singapore, and London.
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They have a workforce made up of 110 employees across the globe. [0]
- The company was founded by a pair of former Financial Analyst Charles Cascarilla (CEO and co-founder) and Richmond Teo (CEO of Paxos Asia and co-founder). [1]
- Paxos was conceived because they wanted to solve problems in the financial system and realized that blockchain could provide the solution. [2]
- They have received atleast five rounds of venture capital funding. As of December 2020, they have received a total of US$240M in funding. [3] (In 2013, US$3.25M, 2015, US$25M Series A funding, 2018, US$65M Series B funding, and in late 2020, US$142M Series C funding which includes Paypal Ventures. [3])
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Paxos is addressing the time it takes for institutions to settle transactions in traditional markets. (Currently, 24 hours to 3 days) The digitizing of securities and commodities would allow for immediate availability of proceeds upon settlement.
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They also provide a stablecoin as a service for enterprises who wish to digitize local currency and transact nearly instantly and with nominal fees. They bring together the stability of U.S. dollar with the efficiency of blockchain technology. [0]
- Their products are intended for enterprises, institutions, and individual investors.
- U.S. crypto exchanges made an estimated $1 billion in trade fee revenue in 2019. [4] As the price of cryptocurrency increases the percentage based fee follows suit and allows for these type of companies to earn more with no additional effort.
- They have an advantage over competitors because they offer an Institutional grade alternative settlement solution and stablecoin as a service. They have more products than competitors.
- Paxos is a New York State-chartered trust company regulated by New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). Paxos is subject to a higher level of regulatory oversight, providing customers the trust that there funds are held securely. [7] They are audited by multiple accounting firms to insure that newly minted PAX or PAXG is actually being backed by equivalent amounts in banks or vaults.
- They are using private blockchain to settle public securities and provide stablecoin as a service on public blockchain.
- They cover several domains of the financial industry to include Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, Enterprise Solutions, and Institutional Solutions.
- The major trends in these domains are a new class of cryptocurrencies that offer price stability via collateralization.
- Decentralized exchanges (DEX) which allows for direct peer-to-peer transactions without intermediates.
- Bitcoin Lightning Network for instant transactions without creating a on-blockchain transaction for individual payments.
- Homomorphic encryption allows for computation of data without decrypting. [6] (In the healthcare field can resolve medical data privacy issues.)
- Other major companies in the stablecoin domain are Tether Operations Limited (USDT) $34.8B, Circle International Bermuda (USDC) $8.1B, Maker Foundation (DAI) $2.3B, and Binance (BUSD) $2.2B. [5]
- Paxos blockchain-based settlement services is being used by large banks like Credit Suisse, Société Générale, and Instinet. They are a major player in the stablecoin market and rank 5th. Paypal will use Paxos Crypto Brokerage API to integrate cryptocurreny into the Paypal digital wallet.
- Some of the metrics that can be used to compare the stablecoin solution with others is Market Capitalization, Market Dominance, and Trading Volume.
- We are able to evaluate company performance by comparing there USD stablecoin PAX and Gold-backed stablecoin PAXG to other similar products. There impact in the PAX stablecoin Based on Market Cap shows that they are not growing at the same rate as competitors but are increasing there market cap at a steady rate. Market Dominance dropped from 4% to under 2% year over year due to USDT growth/popularity also the addition of new stablecoins . Trading volume has decreased significantly (80-90% decrease) perhaps due to expiration of promotions during 2020. [5] In the gold-backed stablecoin they presently trade the most and are 2nd in market cap to new Tether Gold-backed token XAUT.
- Currently they are not growing as fast, but I anticipate business will pick up considerably once Paypal users can purchase native blockchain tokens powered by Paxos.
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Create the paxos decentralized blockchain to offer faster transaction times and a lower fees. (Should not depend on other Blockchains)
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Lauch an iOS and Android smartphone app so users can exchange tokens on the go and manage account activity.
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Add securities/equities to their exchange so they are traded side by side to native cryptocurrency. Allow for native cryptocurrency to stock purchases.
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Reduce fees to help increase liquidity/volume on exchange. (Cryptocurrency Withdrawls Fees and ACH Fees)
- By offering these recommendations they will create new revenue and increase transaction count on there platform. They are a fee-based company and more volume would translate to increased profit.
- They would need to reuse an existing blockchain source code or create there own. At the same time decide on a consensus mechanism. They would require mobile app developers to maintain and continuosly develop the app.
- The blockchain technology is appropriate because it is safer way of storing records and maintaining a history. It is a database that stores data in blocks that are chained together. Decentralized blockchains are immutable and data written to it is irreversible. [8]
[0]: Our Company. https://www.paxos.com/company/
[1]: Paxos Trust Company. In Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos_Trust_Company#:~:text=Charles%20Cascarilla%20and%20Rich%20Teo,itBit%20to%20Paxos%20Trust%20Company.
[2]: CEO Charles Cascarilla - About Paxos, our products, our values and what we look for in team members. In YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nuJEK3qz0
[3]: Paxos Raises 142 Million in Series C Funding, McClain, Rebecca (2020). https://www.paxos.com/paxos-raises-142-million-in-series-c-funding/
[4]: Crypto Exchanges And Bitcoin Are Poised For Massive Growth By 2030 (2020). https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeorshimron/2020/06/20/crypto-exchanges-and-bitcoin-are-poised-for-massive-growth-by-2030/?sh=4c81c2633f83
[5]: Stablecoins by Market Capitalization. In Coingecko https://www.coingecko.com/en/stablecoins
[6]: Homomorphic encryption. In Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption#:~:text=Homomorphic%20encryption%20is%20a%20form,performed%20on%20the%20unencrypted%20data
[7]: Is Paxos regulated? What does that mean? https://www.paxos.com/is-paxos-regulated/
[8]: Blockchain Explained, Conway, Luke (2020). https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp