Paxos, a New York-based firm, which already supplies a dollar-backed cryptocurrency termed as stablecoin – Paxos Standard, along with trading services of Bitcoin, is also planning to launch digital tokens supported by precious metals and publicly traded stocks during the current year.
The stablecoin, Paxos Standard was launched by the company during the last year by tying cash reserves to a blockchain. Paxos CEO, Chad Cascarilla, stated to Fortune’s “Balancing the Ledger” that the company currently is looking to take “any type of asset and put it into a blockchain. The goal is to move assets and settle transactions more quickly and securely and with lower fees.”
To achieve the objective mentioned above the company needs to ensure to maintain the same amount of inventory in the “real world” which is actually registered on the blockchain. The inventory may be in the form of dollars, precious metals, or stocks.
Cascarilla further explaining stated that “How you do it with a gold token is how much gold you have in a vault equals how many gold tokens outstanding. How do you do it with stocks? How many stocks do I have sitting in an account, equals how many stocks in the blockchain.”
As the company delivered positive result during the test of blockchain transactions, the tokenization of stock market equities and bonds, assets are not far away from being a reality. Cascarilla stated that. “We’re getting pretty close, and I think we’ll see it in 2019.”
Further, according to the opinion of Cascarilla, Paxos is the only cryptocurrency company which has an account with the Depository Trust Company (DTC). DTC is a firm which holds the majority of the U.S. stocks and bonds. By this Paxos places itself in a firm position be the first company to put stock trading into the blockchain.
Though Paxos was the first virtual currency company which got licensed in New York, it still needs to obtain additional approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in order to launch cryptocurrencies which are tied to more traditional securities. The company has filed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the approval and is awaiting the same.
Cascarilla also stated that getting commodities onto the blockchain is also in the pipeline and said that “gold is probably the most obvious,” which would be launched “definitely this year.”
Further, the process of tokenization of precious metals solves few of the current issues prevalent with the metals such as cutting of a gold bar into smaller denominations, transportation of such heavy and expensive quantities effectively and smoothly and lending the assets out more efficiently. Cascarilla stated that “Having it sit in a vault but also having it be on a blockchain kind of bridges those two worlds.”
