Empire · Blockworks

Paxos CEO on Crypto Today & Why Stablecoins Are Exploding | Charles Cascarilla

April 6, 2026·1 hr 22 min·5 clips

Cascarilla frames Bitcoin as mathematical proof of work competing with gold's geological proof of work, and says the dollar is just future proof of work — debt.

Paxos begins with the size of the problem. The guest says the company is trying to rebuild financial infrastructure, not just win one crypto product lane. The $900 trillion asset base gives the ambition its scale, but the conversation does not pretend the path was obvious. If the opportunity is that big, why Paxos? Why not build an exchange, a chain, or something closer to crypto speculation? The answer is partly history. Paxos tried other infrastructure routes first, including the private BankChain effort the host ribs for its branding. That joke does some work. It makes the company feel less like a tidy master plan and more like a business that found its shape after a few dead ends. The macro view stays a little uncomfortable, which is the interesting part. The guest can say crypto is entering a golden age while also allowing that the average token may be down sharply and Bitcoin may be under pressure. Price action is not the whole thesis. The bigger argument connects crypto adoption to asset ownership and to the affordability crisis the guest ties to persistent money printing. The K-shaped recovery point lands hard: owning assets becomes a built-in advantage, so Paxos keeps coming back to assets rather than novelty. The close is practical, almost plain. Capital can force focus, but it can also tempt a company into chasing scale before product-market fit is real. Stay lean, watch for accelerating cycles, and do not mistake a big raise for earned room to spend.

As heard by us

A case for Paxos as financial-system infrastructure, not just a token trade.

It frames Paxos as a wager on replatforming the financial system, using the $900 trillion asset figure to give that ambition real scale. The BankChain thread helps ground the private-chain idea in an early institutional experiment, with traditional firms meant to hold assets…

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If you want the business case for replatforming finance, start here.

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