Issuing an asset: just pay it out

There is no "deploy a token" ritual in classic Stellar. An asset is a pair: a short code plus the issuer's address — USDC from Circle's account and USDC from a stranger are different assets.

To issue, the issuer simply pays the asset out of its own account to someone holding a trustline. That first payment is the mint. Supply is whatever the issuer has paid out and not received back — the ledger tracks it across trustlines automatically.

Any account can issue. Scarcity of trust, not permission, is what makes an asset matter.