PayPal’s blockchain partner Paxos accidentally minted $300 trillion in stablecoins in an internal transfer on Wednesday.
Paxos stated that it “immediately identified the error and burned the excess PYUSD” in a social media post. PYUSD is a US dollar-backed stablecoin, and are therefore equal to US dollars on a 1:1 ratio.
The post continued “This was an internal technical error. There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root cause.”
The massive amount of PYUSD stablecoin was visible on analytics platform Etherscan, which showed that the mistake was amended after 20 minutes.
CNBC reported that there not enough US dollars in circulation to back $300 trillion PYUSD, and it would require more than double the world’s GDP to do so.
In August 2025, Paxos settled $48.5 million in New York for AML failures in their partnership with Binance.