No.252
Global Dollar USDG
the dollar-token that splits its earnings with everyone who helps it travel
🎭 a soft-spoken diplomat-banker who never arrives without a briefcase of US Treasuries, and never leaves without paying his hosts
💬 “I hold one US dollar for every coin of me you carry, no surprises. Where I differ from my cousins is the rent: the interest my reserves earn, I send back to the exchanges and apps that spread me, instead of pocketing it all.”
- What: a stablecoin worth $1, fully backed by dollars and short-term US government bonds.
- Who: issued by Paxos from Singapore (Nov 1, 2024), watched over by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
- The twist: reserve income is shared with the partners that distribute it, the Global Dollar Network.
- Supply: not capped, it grows when dollars come in and shrinks when coins are redeemed.
📖 The Story
October 31, 2024. Paxos, a regulated stablecoin firm, announced a new dollar-token and a question wrapped around it. Every stablecoin sits on a pile of reserves, and that pile earns interest. For years the answer to ‘who keeps that interest?’ was simple: the company that issued the coin pocketed it all. Paxos proposed a different answer.
November 1, 2024. Global Dollar went live on Ethereum, and alongside it came the Global Dollar Network, a club of founding partners: Anchorage Digital, Bullish, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Nuvei, Robinhood and Paxos itself. The deal was unusual. The float income would be shared with these partners, paying them for bringing in the users who actually hold the coin. A stablecoin that pays its own salespeople.
The coin was built to behave like a careful institution rather than a gambler. Its reserves, real dollars and short-duration US government securities, sit in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts, with custody handled by DBS Bank. Paxos issues it through a Singapore entity supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and shaped it to fit that regulator's stablecoin rules from the start.
By May 2025 the network had crossed 25 members and around 42 million users, and Global Dollar had opened a second front in the European Union under its MiCA rules. The diplomat had found more rooms to walk into, briefcase in hand.
📊 Stats
🧩 How it works
Global Dollar has no mine and no chain of its own. It's a token living on Ethereum, so it borrows that network's security. The stability is plain bookkeeping, not clever math: when someone deposits real dollars, Paxos mints the same amount of USDG; when someone redeems coins, Paxos burns them and returns the dollars. One coin in circulation for every dollar held.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Built around regulation from day one: a Singapore issuer supervised by the MAS, with reserves in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts (custody via DBS Bank)
- A genuinely fresh idea, sharing reserve income with the partners that spread it, which gives big exchanges a reason to push it
- Backed by heavy names from launch (Kraken, Robinhood, Galaxy and more in the Global Dollar Network), so it didn't start from zero
- It is a late arrival in a crowded room. USDT and USDC are vastly larger, and habit is hard to break
- You are trusting Paxos. Like every fiat-backed coin, its value rests on the reserves being real and fully redeemable, which you cannot verify yourself in real time
- The shared-income model leans on partners staying loyal. If the incentives cool, so could the distribution that the coin depends on
🧬 Evolution lineage
Global Dollar isn't a fork of anything, it's a brand-new contract with no shared codebase. It's a sibling of Paxos's other dollar coins (Pax Dollar, USDP, and the wound-down BUSD), and the same fiat-backed-dollar species as the giants it competes with.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Global Dollar (USDG)?
- It's a stablecoin built so that 1 USDG always equals 1 US dollar. Paxos issues it from Singapore and holds real dollars and short-term US government bonds in reserve, so you can redeem 1 USDG for $1 at any time. It launched in November 2024.
- What makes USDG different from USDC or USDT?
- All three are dollar-backed stablecoins worth about $1. The difference is what happens to the interest the reserves earn. With most stablecoins the issuer keeps it. USDG shares that income with the exchanges and apps in its Global Dollar Network, so the partners that bring in users get paid too.
- Is USDG safe to hold?
- Its reserves are held in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts (custody via DBS Bank), and Paxos in Singapore is supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. That is reassuring, but no stablecoin is risk-free: you are trusting that the reserves are real and fully redeemable, the way every fiat-backed coin asks you to.
- Where can I get USDG?
- Through the exchanges and apps in its Global Dollar Network, which by mid-2025 had grown past 25 members, including Kraken and Robinhood. It lives on Ethereum as a token, with more chains planned. (Information only, not an exchange or investment recommendation.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only.