PayPal briefly wore the crown as the world’s richest company on Wednesday, at least according to on-chain data.
Paxos, the regulated issuer behind PayPal USD, said it mistakenly minted $300 trillion PYUSD during an internal transfer and then sent the entire amount to a burn address within minutes.
The company characterized the incident as a technical error and said no customer funds were at risk. Paxos said in a post on X, “At 3:12 PM EST, Paxos mistakenly minted excess PYUSD as part of an internal transfer… There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe.”
Blockchain records on Ethereum show the mint and the subsequent burn occurring roughly 22 minutes apart, returning the supply to prior levels.
The temporary spike did not reflect real assets at PayPal and did not confer spending power, but it was large enough to trigger a wave of jokes and a few precautionary moves in decentralized finance.
Risk managers for Aave said they would temporarily freeze PYUSD markets after the abnormal transactions appeared.
The error turned a spotlight on how stablecoins are created and destroyed and why operational controls matter. PYUSD is designed to track the U.S. dollar and is issued by Paxos under New York oversight.
The stablecoin’s market value is a fraction of giants such as USDT and USDC, with circulating supply around the low billions rather than the trillions that briefly flashed across explorers.
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The episode adds a fresh chapter to an already animated year for DeFi and DePin, where cash like tokens grease trading, lending, and payments.
Stablecoin issuers and their partners rely on tightly scripted mint and burn procedures, access controls, and monitoring to avoid an event like this. When those safeguards misfire, as they did on Wednesday, automated kill switches and human intervention become the last lines of defense.
PayPal did not issue an immediate public statement, and there is no indication that customer balances changed.
Regulators in the United States and Canada have been circling the sector with a focus on reserve quality, operational resilience, and disclosures.
