Paxos Accidentally Minted $300 Trillion Worth of PYUSD

A technical glitch at stablecoin issuer Paxos sent shockwaves through the crypto community on Wednesday, as they inadvertently minted a staggering $300 trillion worth of PayPal USD (PYUSD) on the Ethereum blockchain. This error, revealed via on-chain data from Etherscan, occurred at 3:12 PM ET and was linked to a Paxos hot wallet connected to PayPal’s official PYUSD smart contract. The company quickly rectified the mistake by burning all the mistakenly created tokens within 30 minutes. The entire minting cost just $2.66 in Ethereum gas fees. While this incident serves as a reminder of the inherent risks associated with decentralized finance (DeFi), it underscores Paxos’ quick response in addressing the error.