Paxos Technical Error Results in $300 Trillion PYUSD Stablecoin Minting Incident
Paxos, the stablecoin issuer, experienced a significant technical malfunction on Wednesday, inadvertently creating 300 trillion PYUSD tokens—a figure surpassing global GDP. The error, traced to an internal systems failure, was detected and rectified within 22 minutes as the erroneously minted tokens were sent to an inaccessible burn address.
Market reactions were swift but contained. AAVE temporarily suspended PYUSD trading as a precautionary measure, while the stablecoin briefly deviated 0.5% from its dollar peg before recovering. Blockchain data confirms the entire sum was permanently removed from circulation.
Paxos emphasized this was purely a technical glitch, with no security compromise or customer fund exposure. The company's rapid response highlights existing safeguards for such contingencies in digital asset systems.
