What Is Paxos? The Company Behind USDP, PYUSD, USDG and PAX Gold

Company and legal entities

Paxos started in 2012 under the name itBit, a bitcoin exchange, and changed its legal name to Paxos Trust Company in 2015. That same year it received the first limited purpose trust charter for digital assets from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), which let it hold customers' digital assets under state trust supervision. Charles Cascarilla, a co-founder, is chief executive; Rich Teo co-founded the company with him.

On December 12, 2025, Paxos completed the conversion of that New York charter into a national trust charter, so all US activity of the renamed Paxos Trust Company, N.A., is now supervised by the OCC. Paxos says this places PYUSD, USDP and PAXG under federal oversight.

Outside the US, Paxos issues USDG through two other entities: Paxos Digital Singapore Pte. Ltd., a major payment institution supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and Paxos Issuance Europe, supervised by Finland's financial regulator under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules. Paxos says it is authorized to issue stablecoins in the US, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and the EU.

Paxos also sells business services: a crypto brokerage that lets fintechs and banks offer crypto trading to their own customers, custody and wallet infrastructure, stablecoin payment tools and the itBit trading venue. Most people who use Paxos never see its name; they use PayPal, a bank app or a fintech app built on top of it.

Paxos-issued tokens

OBOL rates two of these tokens separately: see OBOL's USDP review and OBOL's PYUSD review. The stablecoin ratings compare them with other dollar tokens.

How USDP minting and redemption work

USDP enters circulation when an approved institution sends US dollars to Paxos and receives newly minted tokens; it leaves circulation when the institution returns tokens and Paxos burns them and pays out dollars. Paxos describes USDP as redeemable one-to-one for US dollars at all times.

Who can do this matters. Paxos' Mint and Redeem service requires an institutional account with Paxos. Individuals typically buy and sell USDP on exchanges or through apps, where the price is set by the market and can drift slightly from $1, rather than redeeming with Paxos. As of October 2026, Paxos advertises zero fees to mint or redeem USDG and PYUSD; its pages do not state a separate fee for USDP, so institutions should confirm USDP terms during onboarding.

On-chain, USDP is available on Ethereum and Solana, with these official contract addresses published by Paxos:

• Ethereum: `0x8e870d67f660d95d5be530380d0ec0bd388289e1` (proxy address to interact with)
• Solana: `HVbpJAQGNpkgBaYBZQBR1t7yFdvaYVp2vCQQfKKEN4tM`

What the USDP smart contract allows Paxos to do

The Ethereum contract, published in Paxos' `usdp-contracts` GitHub repository, gives the issuer several powers that holders should understand:

• Upgradeability. The token sits behind a proxy, so Paxos can replace the contract logic without changing the token address.
• Pause. The owner can pause transfers and approvals during a critical security threat.
• Freeze and wipe. An asset protection role can freeze any address's balance and wipe a frozen balance, which allows authorities to seize the backing assets. Paxos says it expects to use freezing very rarely.
• Minting and burning. Only designated supply controllers can create or destroy tokens, optionally under rate limits.

These controls are standard for regulated fiat-backed stablecoins, but they mean USDP is not censorship-resistant. Paxos lists audits of the first contract version by Nomic Labs, ChainSecurity and Trail of Bits, and of the second version by Zellic and Trail of Bits.

Reserves and attestations

Paxos states that USDP reserves are held entirely in cash and cash equivalents, in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts. An independent accounting firm examines the reserves: KPMG LLP has issued the reports posted since February 28, 2025, after earlier reports by WithumSmith+Brown. Paxos' USDP transparency page lists attestation reports through August 2026 but notes that it no longer proactively publishes monthly reserve composition reports for USDP; those can be requested from Paxos.

An attestation confirms that reserves matched tokens outstanding at a point in time. It is narrower than a full financial statement audit of the company.

Regulatory history and incidents

Paxos' track record includes several events that shape how its tokens are viewed:

• BUSD shutdown (2023). Paxos issued Binance USD under NYDFS approval until early 2023, when NYDFS ordered it to stop minting new tokens. Paxos says it wound down more than $16 billion of BUSD without the token losing its peg.
• NYDFS settlement (August 2025). Paxos announced on August 7, 2025, that it had reached a settlement with NYDFS over historical compliance failures, including in its partnership with Binance, with a $26.5 million penalty. The Block put the total settlement at $48.5 million, including required compliance spending. Paxos said the issues had been remediated and caused no customer harm.
• PYUSD minting error (October 2025). On October 15, 2025, Paxos mistakenly minted 300 trillion PYUSD on Ethereum. It burned the excess within about 30 minutes, said there was no security breach and that customer funds were safe, and attributed the event to an internal technical error.
• Federal charter (December 2025). The OCC conversion described above moved US supervision from New York to the federal level.

Getting help

Paxos runs a support center at support.paxos.com with onboarding guides for institutional and brokerage accounts, a contact form and a ticket portal. Holders who bought USDP or PYUSD through an exchange or app should contact that platform first, because Paxos deals directly only with its own account holders.

Official channels

• Website: paxos.com
• Support: support.paxos.com
• Global Dollar (USDG) site: globaldollar.com
• X: x.com/Paxos
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/paxos/
• GitHub: github.com/paxosglobal