A New York-based crypto firm has mistakenly minted $300 trillion worth of stablecoins – before swiftly burning it all.
Paxos Trust Company, issuer of PayPal’s dollar-pegged PYUSD stablecoin, says the error stemmed from an internal technical glitch.
The 300 trillion tokens were minted on the Ethereum blockchain and were sent to a Paxos-controlled wallet before they were essentially destroyed by transferring them to an inaccessible address.
The firm says it has not suffered a security breach and zero customer funds are at risk.
Although impossible to collateralize, on paper the $300 trillion in minted coins would exceed the combined value of all assets on Earth, which are estimated to be at around $247 trillion.
When the coins were minted, the DeFi lending protocol Aave temporarily froze its PYUSD markets as a precaution, citing the “unexpected high-magnitude transaction.”
Paxos says PYUSD’s circulating supply now remains stable at about $2.6 billion, and assets are fully backed by USD deposits and Treasuries.
Paxos also says it has fixed the root cause to prevent the mass minting from happening again.
PYUSD launched in August of 2023 with the goal of facilitating seamless payments on the blockchain.
The coin is now live on 13 blockchain networks.
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