In brief
- Paxos, which handles PayPal's crypto operations, is adding support for four new assets to its wallet tools.
- The company also added former Square lawyer Ben Gray.
Paxos, which supplies services to PayPal and big banks, announced a series of measures on Thursday that could turbocharge DeFi, while also cementing the company's role as a behind-the-scenes crypto powerhouse.
Most notably, Paxos says it is adding support for four tokens—those of Aave, Uniswap, Chainlink and Polygon—to its wallets. Until now, the company has only supported stablecoins as well as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
The upshot is that the giant companies that use Paxos to handle their crypto operations could soon offer the new tokens to hundreds of millions of consumers around the world. In addition to PayPal, Paxos's clients include the likes of Mastercard, Venmo, Brazil mega-bank MercadoLibre and brokerage giant Interactive Brokers.
There's no guarantee, of course, that all of these companies will offer the new tokens but, given the growing popularity of DeFi-related assets, there's a good chance at least some of them will. This could deliver a boost to the tokens and the larger DeFi ecosystem and, in the case of Polygon, to its layer-2 blockchain (Polygon and its MATIC token are not technically considered DeFi).
Paxos also announced that it aims to support a total of 1 billion crypto wallets by the end of this year—a figure that would represent a huge increase from the 360 million wallets the company supported at the end of 2021. A company spokesperson told Decrypt this expansion will come in part from Paxos adding a number of other large clients in coming months.
In addition to the new assets and wallet target, Paxos has also added a new executive, Ben Gray, as its global general counsel. The appointment is notable since Gray comes to Paxos from Square (now known as Block), which has been aggressive in offering Bitcoin through its Cash App product.
According to a Paxos spokesperson, the company hired Gray in part because it plans to significantly expand its overseas operations—a field where Gray has considerable experience.
“Our financial system is desperately in need of modernization, and Paxos is tackling this problem head on," said Gray in a statement. "Paxos and its regulation-first approach to building innovative products will play a central role in the revitalization of our global financial infrastructure."