PAXG to BTC: Convert PAX Gold to Bitcoin, No KYC

PAX Gold is an ERC-20 token that Paxos issues on Ethereum, with each token tied by Paxos to one fine troy ounce of gold. Its value follows gold. Bitcoin follows nothing but its own market. Swapping PAXG to BTC therefore changes what your holding tracks, not just which chain it lives on.

People make this move when they want to rotate out of a gold position into bitcoin, or when they want the value on the Bitcoin network so they can hold it in Sparrow, Electrum or a hardware wallet with no token issuer involved.

That last point matters. Paxos can freeze PAXG at an address, as the issuer of the token. Native BTC has no issuer that could do the same. Neither asset is free of price risk; the swap simply trades a gold-tracking token for a coin with its own, usually larger, price swings.

The deposit is an ERC-20 token transfer on Ethereum mainnet. Your wallet, whether MetaMask, Rabby or a Ledger, pays the gas for it in ETH, not in PAXG. A wallet holding PAXG and zero ETH cannot send the deposit at all, so top up a small amount of ETH at the same 0x address before you start.

Gas costs change with how busy Ethereum is. Sending at a quieter time keeps it lower, but there is no need to set a custom low gas price: a stuck token transfer only delays the swap.

Enter the 0x address you send from as the sender address. It must be a wallet you control. PAXG held on the Paxos platform has to be withdrawn to such a wallet first, since a deposit from a platform account comes from an address that is not yours.

PAXG has 18 decimal places, so you can send part of a token. Copy the amount from the box rather than rounding it in your head.

Paste a receive address from a Bitcoin wallet: bc1, 3 or 1 at the start. Your 0x address cannot receive BTC, and an Ethereum wallet that happens to show a bitcoin balance through a wrapped token is not a Bitcoin wallet. Use Sparrow, Electrum or a hardware wallet, or any wallet that shows a Bitcoin seed and Bitcoin addresses.

A fresh receive address is the tidy choice. It keeps this payout separate from coins you already hold and makes it simple to recognise when it lands.

When the payout is broadcast, the wallet lists it as unconfirmed until a miner includes it in a block. Bitcoin produces a block about every ten minutes on average, and most wallets treat one to three confirmations as settled. You do not need to do anything during that wait; the transaction is already on its way.

Two rows explain most support questions on this pair. The fee row is why ETH has to sit next to the PAXG before you send. The address row is why the Ethereum wallet you send from cannot also be the place the payout goes: the bitcoin needs its own Bitcoin address.

The box shows how much BTC reaches you after fees. The figure comes from aggregated liquidity from leading crypto markets, and the reference rate next to it is the market price of 1 PAXG in BTC before fees. Gold and bitcoin move independently, so this rate can shift noticeably in a short time. It keeps floating until the PAXG deposit confirms, which on Ethereum takes about 2 to 5 minutes.

After that, most swaps finish within minutes. The minimum and maximum for the pair appear in the box before you send.

GhostSwap runs as a no-KYC crypto exchange, so this route needs neither registration nor identity papers. You supply a Bitcoin address for the payout, an Ethereum address for any refund, and the PAXG itself. If you later want gold exposure again, BTC to PAXG runs the same route in reverse.

If a swap cannot be completed, the coins are refunded to the sender address you entered. Here that is PAXG on Ethereum, returned to your 0x address. Keep some ETH there so you can move the PAXG again afterwards.

A status page tied to your swap ID tracks the PAXG deposit and the BTC payout. On Etherscan your deposit shows under the token transfers of your address, not in the plain ETH transaction list. The bitcoin payout can be followed on mempool.space by its transaction ID.

If Etherscan shows the PAXG delivered to the deposit address and the status page has not changed for a long time, email support@ghostswap.io with the swap ID and the Ethereum transaction hash. Send nothing more while the first deposit is being checked.