USDG and the value that goes back to holders. A conversation with Evan Palmer of Paxos
Sofía Soto, from Orbi, talked with Evan Palmer, Senior Business Development Manager at Paxos, about the vision behind Global Dollar (USDG) and the role of the Global Dollar Network in the next stage of digital dollars.
For years, the conversation about stablecoins revolved around a single promise, always being worth the same as one dollar. That promise is still the foundation of everything, but in the interview Sofía recorded for Orbi, Evan Palmer raised a less common question. If a digital dollar is backed by assets that generate value every day, who should keep that value?
Evan works in business development at Paxos, focused on tokenization, and has spent several years in the crypto industry. Paxos was founded in 2012 building infrastructure for institutions and over time became a regulated custodian in the United States and a stablecoin issuer. In addition to USDG, it is behind PYUSD, the stablecoin it issues in partnership with PayPal.
A digital dollar with a different idea
USDG launched in 2024. Each unit is backed by liquid, conservative reserves, mainly short-term US Treasury bills, and can be redeemed one to one for dollars. Up to there, the structure is what you’d expect from a serious stablecoin. The difference lies in what happens with the value those reserves generate. Instead of staying entirely with the issuer, most of it is shared among the companies that are part of the network, which in turn can pass it on to their users as rewards.
Evan described it as a way to bring to anyone something that used to be reserved for institutions, the rate paid by Treasury bills. In a market where it’s often unclear where the returns offered on a digital dollar balance come from, USDG makes the source explicit. What is shared comes from safe reserves, not from lending out funds or exposing them to DeFi protocols. USDG holders don’t need to stake or lock their balance to participate.
Why regulation matters
For Evan, trust is not a matter of image but of design. Paxos has issued stablecoins since 2018 under formal regulatory oversight, and USDG is subject to the supervision of regulators in different jurisdictions. That framework is what sustains the one-to-one redemption with the dollar, and also what opened the door for payment networks like Mastercard and Visa to work with USDG. In practice, that means a digital dollar can go from being stored to being used in everyday purchases.
The Global Dollar Network
USDG wasn’t conceived as a standalone product but as the foundation of a network. The Global Dollar Network brings together more than 100 companies, including Kraken, OKX, Mastercard and Orbi, that share the same conviction, that stablecoins should reward those who hold them and not just whoever issues them. It is an open model in which the incentives of all participants point the same way, toward more people using digital dollars.
Since it was announced in November 2024, the network has grown fast. At the time of the interview, in early 2026, USDG had more than 1.5 billion dollars in circulation and had distributed more than 4 million dollars in rewards among network partners.
In the conversation, Evan summed up the experience for participants this way. It can feel like “free money”, not because of taking on additional risk, but because the economics of safe reserves are shared.
Where Orbi comes in
If the Global Dollar Network defines how value is created and shared, the next step is for that digital dollar to be useful outside the blockchain. That’s where Orbi’s work comes in. In the app you can hold USDG in your Orbi balance and spend it with the Orbi Card, a dollar card, as easily as any other payment method.
To close, Sofía asked Evan for one idea to take away. His answer was an invitation to do your own research at globaldollar.com and to follow the network’s growth on X.
Watch the full conversation below.
Digital dollars are virtual assets subject to the LFPIORPI, not legal tender or bank deposits.
