Who Is Paul Faecks? Poker Pro Turned Plasma Founder and CEO

Paul Faecks is the founder and CEO of Plasma who called USDT "the obvious choice" for his stablecoin blockchain, and USDT0 on that chain closed late October 86.82% below its highest daily close. He reached that job from professional poker and a Berlin startup called Alloy, which he co-founded and ran.

USDT0 is the contract one stablecoin tracker counts as USDT on Plasma, which makes its supply the plainest number to hold against that call. Through the late-October close, the count had last closed above 2 billion tokens on 3 November 2025 and above 1 billion on 16 April 2026. This series gives each close and attaches no cause, so it shows size and says nothing about why.

Paul Faecks at a Glance

Paul Faecks's Career and Background

Faecks's career runs from card tables to institutional crypto software to a chain of his own, and the poker stage has the thinnest paper trail of the three.

The Paul Faecks Poker Years

Kevin Follonier's 24 September 2025 write-up of their podcast conversation is the source here. It calls Faecks a "professional poker player" who learned to think in probabilities. In his words, "Poker teaches you to make the right decision even when randomness means you sometimes lose". The write-up names no tournament and gives no dates. So treat the poker label as an interviewer's summary of that conversation.

The Paul Faecks Alloy Years

Tech.eu reported on 31 May 2022 that Alloy, a Berlin decentralised-finance startup, had raised $3 million in a pre-seed round with Faecks as CEO. It names Adrian Pirija and Tim Wagner as his co-founders, and it describes a platform built to let institutional investors reach DeFi "in a safe and compliant manner".

Alloy had an investment-software partner by 12 December 2023, when SimCorp's partnership release quoted Faecks as "CEO and co-founder". The same release says Alloy's clients ranged from family offices to hedge funds and listed asset managers.

Follonier writes that the company "was eventually acquired" and that Faecks described the result as "fine, but not incredible". His account names no buyer and no date.

The Paul Faecks Plasma Years

Follonier ties the next move to the compliance procedures and procurement delays at Alloy, which he says pushed Faecks back toward faster crypto work. That move produced Plasma, a chain that "focuses solely on stablecoins" in Follonier's words.

Faecks calls stablecoins "the single most interesting sector in all of crypto". The asset class he bet on has its own Phemex Academy guide to what stablecoins are and how they trade.

Who Is Behind Plasma XPL?

Plasma founder Paul Faecks is the person behind Plasma XPL, and the company's own announcements carry his title. The Plasma One launch release, in a Business Wire copy dated 23 June 2026, calls Faecks "Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Plasma". The joint Stripe release of 15 October 2026 calls him "CEO of Plasma".

The June release also names Zaheer Ebtikar as "Chief Strategy Officer at Plasma" and says the company is headquartered in London. Anyone searching for the XPL founder lands on the same name, since XPL is the token of this chain. This Plasma is the stablecoin blockchain, and the name also belongs to Ethereum's old scaling design and to blood-plasma firms.

Neither release names an owner or a shareholder, so the record in these two documents stops at who runs the company.

Plasma One leans on outside firms as well. Plasma's network page says its global account services are "powered by Bridge" and that its card is "issued by Rain". Bridge is the company co-founded by Zach Abrams, the Bridge founder leading Open USD.

What Did Paul Faecks Say About Team Selling?

Faecks denied any team selling in a statement that followed XPL's slide after launch, and COINTURK's report dated 2 October 2025 carries it. The report has him saying all team and investor XPL tokens "are subject to a one-year vesting period and a three-year lock-up period, with none having been sold". It names the speaker as "Paul, Plasma's co-founder", and it puts the team at roughly 50 people.

That's Faecks's own claim about his own token, quoted here from one report dated October 2025, and it carries no more weight than that.

Read the date as closely as the words. A one-year period described in October 2025 runs out by October 2026, and the three-year period in the same sentence would not. That sentence speaks for October 2025, and it can't vouch for team XPL at the late-October 2026 close. The test for a claim like this is the release schedule set against wallet balances on the chain.

How Much USDT0 Sits on Plasma?

USDT0 supply on Plasma closed late October at about 705 million tokens, 86.82% below its highest daily close of about 5.35 billion in October 2025. The low came on 2 September 2026 at about 615 million tokens, the lowest of 402 daily closes from 24 September 2025 to the late-October close. That late-October close sat 14.68% above the low.

Faecks set out the choice in Follonier's write-up by saying "If you have to choose one stablecoin to focus on, USDT is the obvious choice. It actually has real usage." Follonier adds that Faecks is quick to note Plasma is not the "Tether chain", and that the alignment with USDT is deliberate.

Plasma's network page keeps a footnote on the same token, reading "Zero-fee USD₮ transfers refer to Plasma routes".

A supply count can't settle Faecks's point about usage. It measures tokens on the chain and can't show who held them or why the count moved. Ebtikar made a related point about global stablecoin supply in the June release, saying "supply isn't adoption".

Scope matters here, because this is one token. On one public tracker, USDT's share of dollar-pegged stablecoins on Plasma went from about 87% on its 18 October 2025 row to about 52% on its late-October 2026 row. USDT's share across every chain on that tracker held near 60% on both rows.

The tracker's Plasma total for dollar-pegged stablecoins stood about 77% above its 12 August 2026 low on the late-October row, and about 79% below its 9 October 2025 high.

Method: each table figure is totalSupply() on the USDT0 contract, 0xB8CE59FC3717ada4C02eaDF9682A9e934F625ebb, at the last block of each day on Plasma's public RPC. The series runs 402 unbroken closes from 24 September 2025, and the tracker's 18 October 2025 row matches the chain's 17 October close to within 23 tokens.

Why Does Paul Faecks Matter for XPL?

Faecks matters for XPL because he runs the company behind the chain, and its brief has widened since the USDT quote. The June launch put a consumer app on top of the network, and the Stripe release makes Plasma a "design partner" on multi-currency stablecoin cards.

One line in that Stripe release deserves a trader's attention. Stripe's own list of supported stablecoins reads "OUSD and eligible GENIUS-ready stablecoins", and the release doesn't name USDT. That list belongs to Stripe's card infrastructure, so it doesn't show Plasma moving off USDT on its chain.

It does put regulation next to Faecks's choice of token. Which tokens keep working inside the US financial system is one question in Phemex Academy's explainer on what the GENIUS Act rules mean for USDT holders.

Cross-border money is the market Faecks keeps pitching, and our piece on how USDT and USDC are reshaping global remittances sets out what those rails compete with.

What to watch: the USDT0 count against its September 2026 low and the 1 billion mark it last closed above in April 2026. A close through either line is a new fact about the chain Faecks built.

XPL closed late October at $0.0814 on CMC, with XPL/USDT live on Phemex spot and the XPLUSDT futures gone under a delisting notice dated 13 August 2026. Phemex's crypto futures run separately from that spot pair. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Paul Faecks?

Paul Faecks is the founder and CEO of Plasma, the stablecoin blockchain whose token is XPL. A 2025 interview write-up describes his years as a professional poker player, and he co-founded and ran the Berlin startup Alloy before Plasma.

Who is behind Plasma XPL?

Founder and CEO Paul Faecks leads the company, and a June 2026 release also names Zaheer Ebtikar as its chief strategy officer. A report from October 2025 put the team at roughly 50 people.

Who owns Plasma XPL?

The Plasma One release names Paul Faecks as founder and CEO, the Stripe release names him as CEO, and neither names an owner or shareholder. They settle who runs the company and leave control of it and the spread of XPL among holders unstated.

Who is behind Plasma blockchain?

Plasma's network page calls it a purpose-built blockchain for stablecoin payments. The company behind it is headquartered in London, according to its June 2026 release, and Paul Faecks is its founder and CEO.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.