Today in crypto, Paxos says it “mistakenly” minted 300 trillion PayPal stablecoins; Coinbase Ventures backs Indian exchange CoinDCX at a $2.45 billion valuation amid its expansion into India and the Middle East, and analysts Tom Lee and Arthur Hayes double down on their $10,000 Ether price target for year-end.
A $300 trillion fat-finger, as Paxos accidentally mints PYUSD… before burning it
Blockchain data showed stablecoin issuer Paxos both minted and burned 300 trillion tokens of the PayPal USD stablecoin within 30 minutes, leaving many crypto users scratching their heads.
In a Wednesday X post following the mint and burn, Chaos Labs founder Omer Goldberg said Aave would be temporarily freezing trades for PayPal USD (PYUSD) after an “unexpected high-magnitude transaction” of minting and burning the stablecoin. Ethereum blockchain data showed Paxos minting 300 trillion of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin at 7:12 pm UTC and then burning the entire amount 22 minutes later by sending it to an inaccessible wallet.
PYUSD, pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, makes the supply of the burned coins worth about $300 trillion. The stablecoin has a market capitalization of more than $2.3 billion at this writing, making it the sixth-largest coin behind Tether’s USDt (USDT), USDC (USDC), Ethena USDe (USDe), Dai (DAI) and World Liberty Financial USD (USD1).
In a Wednesday X post, Paxos said it had “mistakenly minted excess PYUSD as part of an internal transfer.”
“This was an internal technical error,” said Paxos. “There is no security breach. Customer funds are safe. We have addressed the root cause.”
Coinbase invests in Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX at $2.45 billion valuation
Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of US-based crypto exchange Coinbase, has invested an undisclosed amount in Indian cryptocurrency platform CoinDCX.
According to a Wednesday Coinbase announcement, the placement was made through the exchange’s investment arm, Coinbase Ventures. CoinDCX co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta wrote in an X post that the investment took place at a post-money valuation of $2.45 billion.
In a separate announcement, CoinDCX claimed to serve more than 20 million customers in India and the United Arab Emirates, following its late 2024 acquisition of local crypto exchange BitOasis.
Coinbase noted in its announcement that, as of July, CoinDCX’s annual revenue stood at about $141 million and its yearly transaction volume across products had reached $165 billion. Assets held under custody by the Indian exchange reportedly stood at $1.2 billion at the time.
Tom Lee, Arthur Hayes double down on $10,000 Ether this year
BitMine chair Tom Lee and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes are holding strong on their prediction that Ether will hit $10,000 this year, despite the recent crypto crash, and there being less than three months left on the clock.
“For Ethereum, somewhere between [$10,000] and $12,000,” Lee said on the Bankless podcast on Tuesday, when asked where he sees the cryptocurrency’s price going by the end of this year.
Hayes, who also appeared on the same podcast episode, said he is “going to stay consistent” with his $10,000 prediction by the end of the year.
Lee emphasized that a significant rally like this wouldn’t signal excessive market froth, either, as Ether has largely been consolidating within a range since hitting an all-time high of $4,878 in 2021.
“Ethereum’s basically been basing for four years now, just broke out of the range, so to me, it wouldn’t be a blow off top, but rather seeking essentially price discovery at a new level,” Lee said.
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