Overview
- Paxos says it accidentally minted 300 trillion PYUSD on Ethereum and burned the excess about 24 minutes later, describing an internal technical error with no customer funds at risk.
- CEO Charles Cascarilla told a Federal Reserve roundtable the lapse came from rarely used manual procedures, was detected within minutes, and the tokens were sent to an inaccessible address.
- The incident coincides with Paxos’ application for a national trust charter from the OCC, drawing sharper questions about its minting permissions and operational safeguards.
- Industry voices highlighted on-chain visibility, with Republic Technologies’ Daniel Liu saying transparency enabled rapid alerts and predicting only short‑term reputational damage given no losses.
- Paxos acknowledged it fell short of its standards and said it is reviewing safeguards after the chain briefly reflected a PYUSD supply that exceeded global GDP before the burn.