In an embarrassing mistake, PayPal blockchain partner Paxos accidentally minted 300 trillion PYUSD tokens today. PayPal’s stablecoin, which it launched in 2023is intended to be exchangeable at a rate of 1:1 for US dollars. $300,000 billion is more than double the current global amount GDP of 117,000 billion dollars. In short, this is a very serious mistake by Paxos.
At least this action seemed to be a mistake. Paxos acknowledged the problem in a job on X, assuring customers that their funds are safe and stating that it has burned excess stablecoin reserves. The company said “this was an internal technical error.” Maybe, but internal technical errors can still wreak havoc pretty quickly when it comes to finance, especially in the fantasy worlds of blockchain and crypto. Thanks to the aptly named Web3 is simply doing wonderfully for covering this story.
