Unstable coins

Cryptocurrencies are a manifestation of The Greater Fool Theory of investing. A justification for cryptocurrencies is that they are unmoored from any government-regulated currency. Their primary utility, it turns out, is funding criminal activities.

Stablecoins are a form of cryptocurrency linked to a government currency (the dollar, the rouble, etc). Of course, tethering the value of stablecoin to a bona fide currency does violence to the idea of cryptocurrency independence. The only independence is the exchange rate.

Who, exactly, is controlling how much stablecoin is minted?

“Paxos, the blockchain partner of PayPal, mistakenly minted $300 trillion worth of the online payment giant’s stablecoin on Wednesday in what the company called a “technical error.” 

 

“Market watchers had spotted the enormous injection of the PayPal PYUSD stablecoin on Etherscan — a block explorer and analytics platform for the Ethereum blockchain.

 

“Paxos had mistakenly minted the stablecoins as part of an internal transfer, before it “immediately identified the error and burned the excess PYUSD,” the company said in a social media statement. 

 

“This was an internal technical error. There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root cause,” it added. PayPal didn’t respond to an inquiry from CNBC outside of regular business hours.

 

“Transactions on Etherscan showed that the mistake had been fixed after about 20 minutes.”

There aren’t enough dollars in global circulation to back $300 trillion PYUSD, which would theoretically require more than double the world’s estimated total GDP. 

Why trust these clowns with your money?

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/paypals-crypto-partner-mints-300-trillion-stablecoins-in-technical-error.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawNgkqJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFBTlZmUDFXMEJCS1ZNdTBFAR65UI2gQlZBolGrIgP8VOHCBrCPfZGI0Qz36yCsd0y_jn9Jvn_VdhfLgf8GdQ_aem_JUVdcuBGwjeWJr56_38F8g" 

 

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