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.
© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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