Paxos Accidentally Minted $300 Trillion of PayPal’s Stablecoin — Then Burned It

Core Insights - Paxos mistakenly minted $300 trillion worth of PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, later correcting the error by burning the excess tokens [1][2] - The error was due to the addition of six extra zeros during the minting process, which was quickly rectified by re-minting the correct amount of $300 million [2] - Such minting errors are not uncommon in the crypto industry, with past incidents involving other stablecoin issuers like Tether and BlockFi [3][4] Industry Context - The stablecoin sector's market cap reached approximately $306.18 billion as of mid-October 2025, reflecting a 47% increase year-to-date, driven by major players like Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC [5] - PayPal's PYUSD, while smaller, has a market cap of about $2.32 billion, with its trading price closely aligned to $0.9997 [6]