Structure and history
The company was founded in 2012 by Charles Cascarilla, Rich Teo, and Emil Woods, who had previously run the asset manager Cedar Hill Capital together; its first product was the bitcoin exchange itBit in Singapore. In 2015, the company obtained a limited-purpose trust licence from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) — one of the first for a regulated crypto product in the US — and renamed itself Paxos Trust Company. Charles Cascarilla remains CEO; the company is headquartered in New York. On December 12, 2025, the OCC approved converting Paxos from its New York trust licence to a national trust bank charter — the company became Paxos Trust Company, National Association.
Products
The company issues several stablecoins under different brands: USDG (Global Dollar) through the Global Dollar Network consortium, PYUSD for PayPal and Venmo (both coins are covered in separate profiles), the gold token PAXG (mentioned in "Classification of Stablecoins"), and its own token, USDP (Pax Dollar), issued directly under the Paxos brand. The company previously issued BUSD for Binance; in February 2023, NYDFS ordered a halt to new BUSD issuance, and Paxos separately paid the regulator $48.5 million following an investigation into anti-money-laundering failures tied to that partnership — since then, the company only services redemption of already-issued tokens, with no new issuance. Beyond stablecoin issuance, Paxos also supplies the custody and trading infrastructure behind PayPal's and Venmo's broader crypto features, separate from PYUSD itself, and provides white-label brokerage infrastructure to other financial institutions.
Regulation
Beyond its US OCC trust charter, the company acquired the Finnish e-money institution Membrane Finance Oy in November 2024, forming the Paxos Issuance Europe OÜ entity through which the MiCA-compliant USDG is issued. The company also holds a Major Payment Institution licence from Singapore's Monetary Authority (MAS) and has received preliminary approvals from Abu Dhabi's financial regulator (ADGM FSRA) for its Paxos Middle East Ltd. entity.