PAX Streamlines Redemptions in Battle for Stablecoin Market Share

CEO of the stablecoin issuer Paxos, welcomes the analogy.

As part of this new user interface, Paxos accounts now allow users to instantly redeem PAX dollar-backed stablecoins, which were previously only redeemable a few hours a day.

The Paxos team said so far this stablecoin has facilitated $19.5 billion worth of transactions.

Stepping back, in 2018 Paxos and Gemini both ran incentive programs for their rival stablecoins, PAX and GUSD. Despite discounts on their dollar-pegged tokens, both assets failed to claim much market share from the godfather stablecoin, the partially dollar-backed token called Tether, and its scandal-riddled sister exchange Bitfinex.

Although so far Tether's reign appears impervious to setbacks and continues to trade at high volumes, Paxos is focusing on making it easier to redeem PAX. "I would say that recently it hasn't been too bad to redeem," an OTC trader, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect his relationship with Paxos, told CoinDesk.

Traders told CoinDesk in February 2019 that both Gemini and Paxos, to a lesser degree, were making it difficult to redeem their respective stablecoins for fiat.

Perhaps there never was much competition between Tether more heavily regulated stablecoins.

The second OTC trader said most Tether users aren't looking for the "Architecture and the framework" of a traditional bank like Paxos has.

The first OTC trader said there is hardly any appetite in the market for either GUSD or the newest contender in the stablecoin wars, the ethereum-backed DAI token.

The dark horse in this stablecoin race has always been Coinbase's dollar-backed token, USDC. The second OTC trader said over the past several weeks, since New York regulators clashed with Bitfinex over undisclosed documents related to Tether, there has been some modest increase in demand for both PAX and USDC. "I think that the people that use Tether and that whole ecosystem have shown to be pretty resilient," he said.