PAX Stablecoin Exceeds $5 Billion in Transactions in First 3 Months

U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin Paxos Standard (PAX) has exceeded $5 billion worth of transaction volumes, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Dec. 13.

As reported, PAX is an Ethereum (ETH) blockchain-based stablecoin, backed 1:1 by the U.S. dollar, which sealed regulatory approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) in September.

According to Paxos — the blockchain trust company that issues PAX — the coin has as of today has been used in $5,245,958,124.65 worth of transaction volumes, with a market cap of over $174 million (as of press time, slightly down to $159.5), of which the trust company has redeemed “over $136 million.”

Paxos, which holds its investors’ dollar deposits in FDIC-insured U.S.-domiciled banks, has also included monthly attestation reports for the months since the token’s launch — September, October, November 2018 — as part of its press release.

With Paxos claiming PAX is the “second most widely traded stablecoin with three times the 24-hour trading volume of its next closest competitor,” the token is indeed vying with several other newly-issued fiat-backed stablecoins.

The very same day that PAX was launched, the WInklevoss twins unveiled their own own New York regulator-approved, dollar-backed, ECR-20 compatible stablecoin, the Gemini dollar (GUSD). In October, currently top crypto exchange by market cap OKEx announced it would be listing four stablecoins at once – PAX, GUSD, TrueUSD (TUSD) and USD Coin (USDC).

Paxos’ news confirms a Diar report from Dec. 10, which indicated that the adoption of stablecoins is burgeoning: the same four major stablecoins have in fact all broken the $5 billion mark in on-chain transactions within the three-month period, with November seeing a hefty 1,032 percent surge in on-chain transactions compared to September.

Stalwart, if controversial, stablecoin Tether (USDT), remains the stablecoin with the highest market cap ($1.8 billion) as of press time, currently ranked fifth largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap.

Just yesterday, a report citing “multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation,” indicated that major U.S.-based stablecoin project Basis — which has the backing of names such as Bain Capital Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz — would be shutting down operations and returning most of its funds to investors.