Paxos is rebranding its stablecoin from PAX to USDP

Paxos has announced that it is rebranding its stablecoin from Paxos Standard (PAX) to Pax Dollar (USDP).

"The USDP ticker more easily identifies Pax Dollar as a US dollar-backed token," said Paxos head of strategy Walter Hessert. "This change makes it easier for both newcomers and the crypto literate to grasp our dollar backing. The updated USDP smart contract will go live on August 31, 2021."

In conversation with The Block, Hessert further explained:

"As the market shifts from crypto and DeFi use cases into more global use cases for payments for goods and services types of use cases stablecoins have a really important role to play there and frankly, there's just a lot of demand for a regulated, trustworthy, transparent, stablecoin despite there being other options in the market. It became the right time for us to make the shift."

The announcement builds on Paxos' growing work to distinguish itself from competing stablecoin operators, especially Tether and Circle. Just last month, Paxos published a blog that called USDT and USDC "unregulated" and took issue with the reserve breakdowns of those firms. 

According to Hessert and prior writings from the company, PAX has maintained reserves that are 100% cash or cash equivalents, which for Paxos means short-term Treasury bills. Hessert acknowledges that Gemini operates GUSD under a very similar regulatory regime, but noted that the firm does not publish its reserves. 

The respective reserves and transparency approaches of various stablecoins have become a central question for the crypto world and the primary area of competition between stablecoin operators.

In the early hours of August 23, Centre announced that USDC's backing was returning to cash and cash equivalents after integrating commercial paper and other riskier debt instruments for much of the past year and a half.