PayPal’s stablecoin accidentally minted $300 trillion. It says it fixed the problem. File Photo by Andrew Gombert/EPA
Oct. 16 (UPI) — PayPal’s blockchain partner Paxos accidentally minted $300 trillion in stablecoin Wednesday as part of what it called an “internal transfer.”
The colossal rise in PYUSD stablecoin was noticed by market watchers on Etherscan, an analytics platform for the Ethereum blockchain, CNBC reported.
Paxos announced on X that it “mistakenly minted excess PYUSD as part of an internal transfer.”
“Paxos immediately identified the error and burned the excess PYUSD. This was an internal technical error. There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root cause,” it wrote.
Etherscan showed the error had been fixed after about 20 minutes. PYUSD is a dollar-backed stablecoin, meaning it’s fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. treasuries and similar cash equivalents. PayPal says the tokens are always redeemable for U.S. dollars.
But the $300 trillion in PYUSD would require more dollars than what’s in global circulation. For comparison, In 2024, the global gross domestic product was about $113.3 trillion.
PYUSD is the sixth-largest stablecoin in the world with a market capitalization of over $2.6 billion, CNBC said.
