Paxos
Paxos Technical Briefing
Published November 15, 2022
Supported by Modern Treasury , IowaEDA and Brale
Overview
Davis Hart and Jordan of Paxos walk through the regulated crypto infrastructure Paxos provides to financial institutions — including PayPal, Paxos's first crypto brokerage customer from 2020. This briefing focuses on the June 2022 transfers launch: the ability for Paxos customers to enable their end users to deposit and withdraw crypto directly into their wallets without a fiat round-trip. The demo covers the PayPal web UI receive/send flows, Paxos's guaranteed network fees, and the Postman walkthrough of the three-endpoint withdrawal API: create a crypto-withdrawal fee quote (rate locked for minutes so retail users have time to review), submit the withdrawal with amount-vs-total and fee-asset-selection UX tools for developers, and track the transfer to completion with compliance checks and block confirmations. A final deposit-address walkthrough shows how Paxos issues one address per blockchain per end-user — covering Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and the rest of the asset list.
0:00 Introduction to Paxos — regulated crypto infrastructure
Davis Hart, on the product team at Paxos, introduces Paxos — a regulated crypto services company (New York state trust) providing crypto infrastructure to financial institutions. Most of Paxos's surface area is API; customers like PayPal and Mercado Libre build the consumer UX on top.
0:30 The PayPal crypto partnership
PayPal was Paxos's first crypto brokerage customer in 2020, launching buy/sell/hold. This briefing demos the June 2022 follow-up GA: the ability for Paxos customers to enable crypto deposits and withdrawals directly into and out of the PayPal wallet — no round-trip through fiat rails.
1:30 Why transfers matter — P2P, asset acquisition, payments primitives
Transfers unlock P2P crypto sending between friends and family (natural follow-on to PayPal's core P2P product), a new asset-acquisition channel for PayPal (customers can move crypto in from a competitor), and the primitive underneath future payments in web3.
2:30 The invisible compliance layer
Under the hood Paxos handles full compliance monitoring, travel rule compliance, treasury management, and signing — at PayPal scale. The simple UX is backed by a lot of regulated plumbing.
3:00 PayPal receive Bitcoin — unique per-user address
The PayPal web UI renders a transfer button for Bitcoin. Receive generates a unique Bitcoin address mapped to the PayPal account — send from any wallet or exchange and funds show up in PayPal.
4:30 Guaranteed network fees
PayPal presents the amount, network fee, and delivery time before sending. A signature Paxos feature: the network fee is guaranteed for about five minutes — whatever Paxos ends up paying on-chain, the user pays the quoted fee.
6:30 API walkthrough — fee quotation, withdrawal, tracking
Jordan walks through the three-endpoint withdrawal integration in Postman: create a crypto-withdrawal fee quote, submit the withdrawal, and track it to completion.
7:00 Fee quotation API with locked rate
The /crypto-withdrawals/fees endpoint quotes a guaranteed fee rate that Paxos holds for a period of time — giving retail users breathing room to review a transaction before committing.
8:30 Amount vs total, fee asset selection
Integrators can request "send exactly 0.01 ETH" (put the fee on top) or "send all I have" (take the fee out of total). Fee asset is settable — send LINK and deduct the fee in LINK even though Paxos pays ETH gas under the hood.
10:00 Execute withdrawal and track
With a fee ID, the crypto-withdrawal endpoint locks in the rate and debits the user's Paxos profile. List Transfers shows the withdrawal in pending — Paxos runs compliance checks and waits for block confirmations before flipping to completed with an on-chain transaction hash.
13:00 Deposit addresses — one per blockchain per user
The create-deposit-address endpoint returns a per-user-per-network address. Every Paxos end user has at least one deposit address per supported blockchain — Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and the rest.
Presented by Jordan Valentine and Davis Hart — Paxos · website
Topics: Stablecoins, Crypto Infrastructure, Compliance & Regulation
