Paxos mistakenly mints $300 trillion PYUSD on Ethereum, citing tech error
Quick Take
- Paxos minted 300 trillion PYUSD stablecoin tokens by mistake on Wednesday.
- The company attributed the error to a technical issue and said that the root cause of the incident has been addressed.
Stablecoin issuer Paxos experienced a "technical error" that resulted in the minting of 300 trillion PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin on Wednesday.
The incident, which occurred at 3:12 p.m. ET, was resolved within 30 minutes, as Paxos burned the 300 trillion tokens.
"Paxos immediately identified the error and burned the excess PYUSD," Paxos wrote in an X post. "There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root cause."
According to data from Etherscan, the erroneous mint originated from a Paxos hot wallet and was directed to PayPal's PYUSD smart contract. The 300 trillion tokens — equivalent to $300 trillion given the stablecoin's dollar peg — far exceeds U.S. national debt, which is $37 trillion, and even surpass global GDP, estimated at around $117 trillion.
The incident briefly disrupted DeFi markets, where Aave temporarily froze PYUSD markets as a precautionary measure. PYUSD's price momentarily deviated from its $1 peg but quickly stabilized following the burn. Paxos also proceeded to mint 300 million PYUSD as part of its routine operations.
PYUSD is currently the sixth-largest stablecoin in the world with a market capitalization of $2.6 billion, according to The Block's price data.
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