Stabledash Live · Mar 3 · 26 min

Paxos Labs - Private Stablecoin Payroll, USAD on Aleo, and Compliant DeFi Yield

With Anjali George

Key takeaways

Anjali George says large institutions are already launching their own stablecoins or crypto offerings, and she points to SoFi USD as an example.
Paxos Labs issues USAD, a private stablecoin on Aleo backed one to one by USDG, and it is now listed on the Toku payroll platform.
George says Paxos Labs puts most of its focus on structured yield strategies for institutions, and its issuance product Origin is a smaller part of the business.

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Summary

George argues that institutions are arriving on chain and need privacy and guardrails, which is the case Paxos Labs makes for its private stablecoin and its yield products.

Anjali George, Head of Marketing at Paxos Labs, says large institutions are already working to launch their own stablecoins or offer crypto on their platforms, and she names SoFi USD as one case. She joined about eight months ago, when the team spun out, as one of its first core hires.

Crossing the adoption chasm

Anjali George says crypto has finished its early adopter phase and is now crossing the gap to the middle of the curve, where most users are. She adds that many investment firms now offer crypto as well.

“People don't buy the product. People buy the people behind the product. And even this is, like, true for large sales, like, motions.”

Anjali George

Private money for payroll

Paxos Labs issues USAD on Aleo and mints every unit in use. The token is backed one to one by USDG, the Global Dollar Network token. George says Aleo first talked with Paxos about the project, and it made more sense for Aleo to work with Paxos Labs once the unit spun out.

According to Anjali George, larger institutions have held back from stablecoin payroll because a public ledger exposes trade secrets, such as which vendors they pay and how much each employee earns. She says that with USAD now listed on Toku, Aleo is working with a few NGOs and payroll firms that otherwise would not have considered stablecoins.

Yield with guardrails

George says Paxos Labs focuses mainly on yield, offering treasury, core and frontier strategies. She says firms like Schwab or Bank of America are not ready to give users open access to DeFi protocols and need a lot of guardrails in place.

Lessons from Tron

Anjali George was Director of Marketing at Tron from 2019 onwards. She says Tether's USDT on Tron was overshadowing USDT on Ethereum within two, three years, driven by on-the-ground adoption in emerging markets, where people wanted access to US dollars.

Marketing by education

Anjali George describes an eighty twenty split: 80% of the effort goes to sales support and education, 20% to visibility. She says inbound contacts usually understand crypto, but executives further up the chain know less. Her designers use AI image and video models, but she calls herself very anti AI content writing.

Taken together, Anjali George's view is that institutions are moving toward stablecoins, and that what holds them back is privacy, guardrails and executive understanding. Those are the gaps Paxos Labs is building for and marketing toward.

Paxos Labs, Tron, Toku, and Global Dollar Network come up most.

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