V-Sum Two
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Supported by The Kauffman Foundation and Modern Treasury
Technical Briefings
Zach Kwartler
Zach Portler, product lead at Paxos, introduces Paxos as the regulated-custodian gateway between physical and digital assets, built for the multi-decade migration of $600T of assets from closed ledgers to public blockchains. Paxos is unusual in offering regulated custody and tokenization across four asset classes — crypto, cash, commodities, and securities — including USD-backed stablecoins (wire in, Paxos mints 1:1-redeemable tokens) and Pax Gold (PAXG), where tokenized gold balances on Ethereum are backed by physical gold in an unallocated account. This earlier briefing zooms in on the PayPal crypto partnership Paxos powers: the Paxos admin portal's signing ceremony for moving assets between banks and blockchains, and the four Paxos API endpoints PayPal uses under the hood (list-historical-prices for the chart, list-quotes to price a buy, create-quote-executions for the actual order, tickers for real-time holdings).
John Shammas
John, product lead at DriveWealth, demos DriveWealth — the brokerage infrastructure behind Cash App investing in the US, Revolut in Europe, and a long list of wallets across Africa, South America, India, and Southeast Asia. The demo uses a sample banking app with an $845 balance to show how a customer goes from pure checking to buying $50 of Starbucks stock without leaving the app. Because the bank already holds identity data, DriveWealth\'s onboarding only collects brokerage-specific disclosures (SSN confirmation, broker/politician questions) — creating a tax-and-regulator-ready brokerage account in seconds. The account.managementType flag switches between self-directed and managed (robo-advisor) flows on the same API surface. DriveWealth was the first to offer real-time fractional shares: a $50 market order for Starbucks is recalculated against the live price so users never over- or under-spend. Shares are stored to ten decimal places (inspired by crypto UX), enabling pennies-of-Berkshire orders. Live P/L, cost basis, and market value surface in both the partner app and DriveWealth\'s admin portal.
Peter Tapling & George Throckmorton
George (Nacha) and Peter demo Phixius — Nacha\'s business-focused data-services network for financial institutions, fintechs, and payment networks. Where consumer open banking addresses account holders, Phixius addresses the payment-provider side: exchanging data (ACH account validation, electronic payment information, etc.) between Credentialed Service Providers (CSPs) before a payment hits the rail. Phixius is point-to-point — no centralized storage, no give-to-get model. It combines standardized Nacha APIs with a blockchain/shared-ledger layer used for authentication, audit trail, and rule enforcement. Each request uses an authentication token that is effectively the address of a smart contract between the requesting CSP and responding CSP for that specific purpose. The demo runs two exchange services: an ACH account validation (routing + account → valid/invalid for Nacha), and an Electronic Payment Information exchange where Care-Free Catering at High-Rise Bank subscribes to payment info for Best Spreads at Low-Rise Credit Union — replacing the PDF-form email loop with an authoritative API exchange. A smart-contract subscription fires a notification when Best Spreads adds Zelle to their profile, proving the ongoing-update pattern.
Sponsors
V-Sum Two was made possible by The Kauffman Foundation and Modern Treasury