PayPal USD (PYUSD)

Backing is conventional and holds no crypto exposure: dollar deposits, short-dated US Treasury obligations and cash equivalents, disclosed in a published monthly reserve breakdown. Each token is redeemable with the issuer at one dollar, and for retail holders that redemption runs through the PayPal and Venmo apps. The issuer can freeze and seize tokens when the law requires it, a trait shared by every regulated dollar token.

What separates it from the older large dollar tokens is origin rather than mechanics: it was wired into a consumer payments service with an established audience from day one. The risk it carries is credit rather than market risk, and it rests entirely on the issuer and the composition of its reserve.

The issuer is Paxos, not PayPal itself: the liability and the reserve sit with the trust company, while the payments service handles distribution.