Do you know that feeling of discouragement when you've messed up at work... Only this time it cost 300 billion dollars (more or less). Paxos, the issuer of PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, accidentally minted 300 billion dollars in tokens before realizing the mistake and burning them an hour later.

The company blamed a user error, but the whole saga raises urgent questions about how much control stablecoin issuers really have and how little protection exists on-chain to stop such mistakes.

The company reactivated 300 million dollars shortly after, but the damage to public trust (and to the perception of TradFi) could persist. If stablecoins can be created so easily, how "stable" are they really?