Swap PAX Gold (PAXG)

The facts below were checked on 14 October 2026 against paxos.com, etherscan.io and ethereum.org.

A token with an issuer

PAX Gold is not a coin with a chain of its own. It is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, issued by Paxos Trust Company, and each token stands for one fine troy ounce of a London Good Delivery gold bar held in LBMA vaults in London. Paxos launched it on 5 September 2019 with approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services; the 2019 release names Brink's among the vault operators. Paxos publishes an attestation report every month; its transparency page says reports posted on or after 28 February 2025 are issued by KPMG LLP and earlier ones by WithumSmith+Brown. For a sender the point is this: the chain carries the token, and a company carries the gold. Both have to be in order for the token to mean what it says.

What moves when you send PAXG

A PAXG transfer is an Ethereum transaction that calls the token contract: the contract's ledger moves a balance from one address to another, and no ETH changes hands except the gas. The sender pays gas in ETH, and an ERC-20 transfer uses more gas than a plain ETH transfer. A wallet holding PAXG and no ETH can see the balance and cannot move it. Nothing about the gold moves at all; Paxos's allocation of bars to addresses is bookkeeping on its side.

Confirmations the site waits for

The route data behind this site counts a PAXG deposit after 100 Ethereum confirmations, against 15 for ETH or USDT on the same chain. Ethereum proposes a block every 12-second slot, so a hundred of them is twenty minutes; with processing the estimate reads 21–44 minutes, the same window as two Bitcoin confirmations. The stricter count reflects the value a single token carries. A swap into PAXG is counted by the other coin's rule — 2 confirmations from Bitcoin, 1 from TRON — and then paid out as a token transfer on Ethereum.

Fees on the Paxos side

Paxos charges fees where tokens are created or destroyed — buying PAXG from Paxos, redeeming it for gold or dollars — on a tiered schedule published on its support site, plus a small fee for converting between PAXG and allocated or unallocated gold. None of those apply to a transfer between two addresses or to a swap here. The token contract also contains a transfer-fee mechanism under Paxos's control, which an older Paxos help page describes as deducting a fee from the amount sent; on 14 October 2026 the product page advertised zero on-chain transfer fees. The amount that arrives at the deposit address is what the swap counts, so if a fee were ever deducted on-chain, the swap would run on the smaller figure.

Two trust relationships, not one. Sending PAXG means trusting Ethereum to record the transfer, which it does in 12-second slots, and trusting Paxos to hold the gold, which it attests to monthly. The swap deals only with the first.

PAXG lives at Ethereum addresses: 0x followed by 40 hexadecimal characters, 42 in all. Any Ethereum address can hold it, and most wallets show it once the token is added to their list. The token itself is identified by one address that is not a wallet — the contract.

What the form accepts

For a PAXG payout the form takes a 0x… address of 42 hexadecimal characters, and the token is sent on Ethereum. The form cannot tell Ethereum from Polygon or Base by the format — nothing can — so the receiving side must expect an ERC-20 on Ethereum. The deposit address the form shows for a PAXG deposit is an ordinary Ethereum address; what makes the deposit a PAXG deposit is that the token contract is the one called.

The contract address is the test

Etherscan lists 0x4580…af78 as Paxos Gold (PAXG), 18 decimals, source code verified, checked on 14 October 2026. Any other token calling itself PAXG on Ethereum is not PAX Gold, and a wallet's token list can show a look-alike with the same symbol. Before sending a deposit, open the token in your wallet and compare its contract address with the one above, character for character at the start and the end. The same check applies to a payout: Etherscan's page for your address lists the token under its contract.

Which address to give

1. Your own wallet: its Ethereum address. To move the PAXG on later you will need ETH at the same address for gas; receiving costs nothing.
2. An exchange: the PAXG deposit address from its deposit page, with the network set to Ethereum (ERC-20). If the exchange offers PAXG on Solana too, that address is for a different token.
3. Another person: their Ethereum address, and a word about the network. A 0x… address they use on Base will also hold PAXG — on Ethereum, where the payout lands.

Paxos's allocation look-up

Paxos's site offers a look-up that takes an Ethereum or Solana wallet address and shows the serial number, weight and vault of the gold allocated to the PAXG at that address. It works for on-chain wallets, not for a balance held at an exchange, which sits in the exchange's address. It is the one thing a holder can do that a holder of most tokens cannot: see what, specifically, the token is a claim on.

Every Ethereum transaction has a 66-character hash beginning with 0x. The status page links the Ethereum side of a swap to Etherscan; a PAXG transfer has a page there with one line that matters more than the rest.

At the top: the status — Success, Pending or Fail — the block number and the confirmations since, the timestamp, the From address, and a To address that for a PAXG transfer is the token contract, not the receiver. The value line shows 0 ETH, because no ETH moved. Tokens Transferred is where the transfer is: the token name Paxos Gold (PAXG), the amount, the sending address and the receiving address. Then the transaction fee in ETH and the gas price it was paid at, and lower down the gas used, the nonce and the input data.

Reading the Tokens Transferred line

1. The token name links to the contract page; check that the contract is 0x4580…af78.
2. The receiving address in that line — not the To address at the top — is where the PAXG went. For a deposit it must be the address from the form.
3. The amount is in PAXG to 18 decimal places. A deposit of 0.25 PAXG is a quarter-ounce; the page shows it as 0.25.

A deposit you sent

1. Copy the hash from your wallet or the exchange's withdrawal history.
2. Open it on Etherscan. Not found means it was not broadcast on Ethereum; a withdrawal sent on Solana has a hash on a Solana explorer instead.
3. Check the receiving address in Tokens Transferred against the deposit address from the form, and the amount against the figure you entered.
4. Fail in red means the transaction was mined but reverted — out of gas is the usual cause for an ERC-20 transfer. Nothing moved except the fee; send again with a higher gas limit.
5. Count the confirmations. A hundred is the target, and the status page updates on its own as they arrive.

A payout you received

1. Open the payout hash from the status page.
2. Find your address as the receiver in Tokens Transferred. The amount is "You get" from the form, with the payout network fee already taken out.
3. A wallet that does not show the token: it arrived — Etherscan's page for your address lists PAXG under the contract — but the wallet has not been told to display it. Add the token by its contract address.
4. Keep the hash. It is the evidence the payout happened and what support on either side will ask for.

A deposit still pending

Pending on Etherscan means the transaction is known and waiting for a block. On Ethereum that can last: a gas price below what the current blocks take leaves a transaction in the mempool until demand falls. The sending wallet is where it is fixed — a speed-up resends with a higher gas price and the same nonce, and the hash changes, so keep the new one.

What a block explorer shows about a swap does the same walk for other networks; Reading a swap status page explains each stage.

PAXG's mistakes are the mistakes of every Ethereum token — gas, the wrong network, a look-alike — with one of its own: an amount so small it is not worth the gas to move.

Gas is the cost to watch

The gold price makes PAXG a large sum per token, and the route minimum is a small fraction of one. What limits a small swap is not the minimum but the ETH gas on the deposit transaction, which is the same whether you send a tenth of an ounce or ten. An ERC-20 transfer costs more gas than a plain ETH transfer; at a busy hour on Ethereum that can be a visible slice of a small amount. Look at the "You get" figure and at your wallet's gas estimate together before sending. Minimums, maximums and network fees on small swaps shows how the minimum is set.

The wrong network with the right address

A PAXG deposit address is an Ethereum address, and it is also a valid address on Polygon, Base and every EVM network. PAXG does not exist natively on those networks, so the realistic mistake is different: ETH or another token sent to the deposit address on Ethereum itself, or PAXG on Solana sent to a Solana address that looks like the exchange's. Sent USDT to the wrong network covers what can and cannot be done when a token lands somewhere the swap is not looking.

A hundred confirmations is not a problem

The deposit takes longer to count than any other on Ethereum. Twenty to forty minutes with the status page climbing towards 100 is the design, and the rate is fixed when it gets there; the market has that long to move between estimate and payout, which Floating rate: estimate vs payout explains. A deposit stuck at a low number for an hour is a different thing — an unconfirmed transaction with a low gas price, visible as Pending on Etherscan.

A confirmed Ethereum transaction cannot be reversed , and neither can a token transfer inside one. The checks — contract, network, gas — happen before Send.

PAXG changes when Paxos changes it, not by network upgrade; the Ethereum chain underneath changed its consensus in 2022 and the token did not notice. The dated changes a holder can see are below, from paxos.com and ethereum.org, read on 14 October 2026.

The launch, September 2019. Paxos's release describes the token as the first crypto-asset redeemable for physical gold, each representing one fine troy ounce of London Good Delivery gold in London vaults, with Brink's among the custodians. The contract has had the same address since; the figures on this page were read from it on Etherscan.

Ethereum's merge, September 2022. A change under the token rather than to it. With proof of stake, Ethereum proposes a block every 12-second slot, which is why a hundred confirmations is a known quantity rather than a guess. Nothing about the token, its address or its contract changed.

The attestation firm, February 2025. The transparency page states that reports posted on or after 28 February 2025 are issued by KPMG LLP, with the appointment approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services, and that earlier reports came from WithumSmith+Brown. The cadence is monthly throughout; the archive on the support site goes back to launch.

Fees on Paxos's side, 2026. The support article on fees gives a creation-fee schedule in tiers by ounces, a redemption-fee schedule in bands effective 1 September 2026, and a conversion fee between PAXG and gold of 5 basis points from the same date. All of it applies at Paxos's counter, not on the chain, and none of it applies to a swap here. The one on-chain item — a transfer fee the contract can deduct — was advertised as zero on the product page when read; the help page describing the deduction carries no date.

PAXG on Solana. Paxos also issues PAXG on Solana; its product page refers to Ethereum and Solana wallets in the allocation look-up. The date of the Solana issuance was not on the pages read. The site accepts and pays the Ethereum token only.

What has not changed. One contract address, one ounce per token, a monthly report, and gas in ETH. A wallet that held PAXG in 2020 holds the same token at the same contract today.

People hold PAXG and BTC for the same reason — as something to keep rather than spend — and the route with a page here, PAXG → BTC, is the move between them. What follows is about the mechanics of holding and transferring each, not about which is the better thing to own; this site does not give that kind of advice. The Bitcoin side is described on the Bitcoin page.

An issuer, or none. This is the difference everything else follows from. PAXG is a token whose value rests on Paxos holding the gold and honouring redemption, which is why the monthly attestation exists and why the contract is administered by the company. Bitcoin has no counterparty: nothing is held for you, nothing can be redeemed, and no one can change a balance. Which arrangement a holder prefers is a question about trust, not about transfer.

Moving it. A PAXG transfer needs ETH in the sending wallet and lands as a token at an Ethereum address, where it needs ETH again to move on. A BTC transfer needs only BTC. The site waits the same twenty-to-forty minutes for either deposit, for different reasons: a hundred fast Ethereum blocks against two slow Bitcoin ones.

Dividing it. Both are divisible far below any amount anyone would send. PAXG's 18 decimals mean a hundredth of an ounce is an ordinary transfer; Bitcoin's eight mean the same for a hundredth of a coin.

What an explorer shows. On Etherscan a PAXG transfer is a line in Tokens Transferred under the contract, with the To address being the contract itself. On a Bitcoin explorer a transfer is inputs and outputs with the coins themselves. Both are public to the last decimal.

The route. PAXG → BTC goes from the token to the coin with two addresses: an Ethereum deposit address and your Bitcoin payout address. The reverse can be chosen in the form and lands as PAXG in an Ethereum wallet that will need ETH next to it.