PayPal Stablecoin Fakes Flood Ethereum—Here's How to Find the Real One

The announcement of PayPal's PYUSD has sparked a wave of imposter tokens on Uniswap, exploiting the hype.

3 min read

Aug 7, 2023

Showing that crypto doesn’t sleep, several imposter tokens using the PYUSD ticker have already appeared on the decentralized exchange, Uniswap, hoping to cash in on the hype around PayPal’s newly announced ERC-20 stablecoin, PayPal USD.

A PayPal spokesperson confirmed with Decrypt the real PayPal USD ERC-20 contract address via Etherscan. The token itself was created on November 8, 2022.

Currently, trading pairs on Uniswap using the PYUSD ticker include PYUSD/WETH and PYUSD/WBNB. Both WETH and WBNB are "wrapped" tokens pegged to the market price of Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, respectively.

The ERC-20 token standard allows developers to create tokens on the Ethereum network. While not all, many of the tokens trading on Uniswap, like PayPal USD, are ERC-20 tokens.

A decentralized exchange, or DEX, is a platform where people can trade cryptocurrencies without an intermediary. A decentralized exchange uses smart contracts to facilitate trading between individuals but doesn’t take control of their coins.

Thanks to the hype surrounding Pepecoin, Uniswap’s daily volume surpassed $1 billion, putting it ahead of centralized exchange Coinbase in May.

In a case of buyer beware, PayPal has stated that PYUSD would only be available through PayPal and did not specify if there were plans to list on third-party exchanges like Coinbase or Binance.

PayPal said in its press release that PayPal USD could be sent between PayPal and compatible external wallets and adopted by exchanges, so the stablecoin could one day find its way onto decentralized exchanges whether PayPal likes it or not.

Still, it is unlikely the tokens currently trading on Uniswap are anything other than a cash grab.

Degens launching meme coins based on recent events is not new. On Sunday, news of the discovery of a new substance, LK-99, and its potential use for superconductors saw the launch of superconductor meme-coins, including LK-99, Superconductivity, and LK-99 Protocol.

Uniswap has not yet responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.

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