- Paxos, the issuer of PayPal USD (PYUSD), accidentally minted US$300 trillion worth of the stablecoin due to an internal operational error.
- Immediately after the massive error—a sum three times the world’s GDP—Paxos burned the entire amount and confirmed that customer balances were never at risk.
- This “fat finger” mistake occurred as Paxos is seeking a national trust charter under the GENIUS Act, leading to widespread mockery on social media.
Something quite baffling has just happened with Paxos, and while the headline says it all, you might want to stick around for the memes.
And yes, Paxos, the issuer of PayPal USD (PYUSD), printed 300 trillion worth of the stablecoin. What’s crazier is that the protocol immediately burned it all after sending it to an inaccessible burner address. Just like that. By the way, that’s around 3 times larger than the entire world’s GDP, according to the IMF.
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The Richest Company on Earth Thanks to Fat Fingers
Many on social media flagged the incident as a “fat finger” mistake, before Paxos confirmed the operational error on X, with no evidence of external compromise so far.
Paxos said an internal transfer at 3:12 p.m. EST triggered an unintended mint of PYUSD. After realising the major screw up, they destroyed the tokens and went on to say that customer balances were never at risk. The company said it “traced and fixed” the underlying technical cause.
As this couldn’t be any worse, almost like a tragic comedy, this mistake happens just as Paxos seeks a national trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under the recently passed GENIUS Act.
Approval would allow the company to conduct business nationwide as a regulated trust, alongside other stablecoin issuers pursuing similar charters.
Needless to say, everyone in Crypto Twitter mocked the apparent internal error across social media, joking that the new tokens could wipe out the US national debt of US$37.8 trillion (AU$58.97 trillion) and riffing on Plasma’s “trillions” branding.
“Trillions achieved incorrectly,” wrote Plasma growth lead Proof Nathan. “This isn’t the trillions I wanted,” said Loopify, founder of Treeverse.
Others jokingly asked for a few trillions:
Yet Icebergy’s post might be the winner:
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