Blockchain Trust Company, Paxos has issued about $50 million worth of its dollar-pegged stablecoin Paxos Standard Token. This was revealed yesterday in a tweet by Dorothy Jean Chang, Paxos vice president of marketing and communications. The news provides the first major indication regarding the scale of adoption experienced by the Ethereum-based stablecoin since it received regulatory approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) in September.
Paxos Backs Up Its Claims
Earlier yesterday, Chang had also revealed that Paxos released $36 million worth of the stablecoin in the month it was launched. Etherscan data reveals that 50,838,503.47 PAX with a value of about $52,275,897.44 is in circulation. Paxos brags to have “achieved the fastest, widest institutional adoption of any digital asset,” and with the relatively quick adoption of the PAX token, this claim may well have a good amount of truth to it.
Withum, a third-party auditor earlier confirmed that Paxos held around $14.6 million in its reserve account, almost equal to the number of PAX tokens in circulation then. This was in September 2018, before the official announcement of $36 million and later $50 million.
Binance and OKEx are among six of the top ten crypto exchanges that have listed the asset, while OKcoin and itBit are to join soon. OKEx, the third biggest crypto exchange in terms of market capitalization has announced it will be listing four stablecoins – PAX, TrueUSD (TUSD), USD Coin (USDC) and the Gemini Dollar (GUSD).
Tether’s Death by a Thousand Competitors?
BitPay, a U.S. based crypto payment processor has also confirmed it now accepts two stablecoins- GUSD and USDC for merchant settlement. Stiff competition abounds as the Winklevoss twins unveil their NY-regulator approved stablecoin, the Gemini which is also dollar backed. Many other newly-issued stablecoins are also in competition.
Paxos’ announcement comes at a time when strong stablecoin, Tether (USDT) and its associated crypto exchange Bitfinex, are reportedly having banking complications. Tether traded at a range below its average and dropped from its U.S. dollar peg. Tether’s history of huge USDT issuance has drawn attention to the possibility of it affecting BTC’s price performance though this was recently debunked by a research study.
Regardless, Tether seems to be undergoing a sort of death by a thousand cuts in the stablecoin marketplace as almost weekly, new USD-pegged stablecoins are launched on the premise of improving on its failings including enabling full audits and being completely subject to strict financial regulation.
