Stablecoin issuer Paxos briefly sent shockwaves through the crypto world on Wednesday after it accidentally minted $300 trillion worth of PayPal USD (PYUSD) on the Ethereum blockchain.
According to on-chain data from Etherscan, the mint occurred at 3:12 p.m. ET and was traced back to a Paxos hot wallet linked to PayPal’s official PYUSD smart contract. The company quickly identified the issue and burned all the mistakenly created tokens within 30 minutes. The entire minting cost just $2.66 in Ethereum gas fees.
“This was an internal technical error,” Paxos said on X. “There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root cause.” The firm added that it maintains control over PYUSD issuance and redemption.
Crypto users pointed out that Paxos had briefly created more value than the global GDP, estimated at $117 trillion, and nearly 10 times the U.S. national debt.
The incident briefly unsettled parts of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. Aave, a leading lending platform, temporarily froze PYUSD markets as a precaution. The stablecoin’s price briefly moved off its $1 peg but returned to normal once the excess tokens were burned.
The cryptocurrency community reacted with disbelief and sarcasm, questioning how such an error could have passed internal checks. One user asked, “How do you fat-finger 6 digits?” while others joked that Paxos had printed enough to erase global debt.
As humor gave way to concern, industry figures pointed to gaps in quality control. Gnosis Co-Founder Martin Köppelmann commented that it was “not a good look to get the decimals wrong,” while analysts said the mistake underscored the fragility of systems managing programmable money.
The event reignited debate over stablecoin oversight, as regulators push for stricter transparency on issuance and reserves. Similar mistakes have happened before. In 2019, Tether accidentally minted $5 billion, but none on this scale.
PayPal, which partners with Paxos to issue PYUSD, has not commented on the incident. Paxos reiterated that PYUSD remains fully backed 1:1 and that no users or partners were affected. The stablecoin currently has a market capitalization of about $2.6 billion, according to DefiLama.
Despite the quick fix, the episode shows how even experienced players can make costly mistakes, and how, in blockchain finance, a single error can momentarily create more money than exists on Earth.