Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny, very warm, very sunny Las Vegas. I'm here at World of Concrete, as I mentioned before. It's a lovely time and a lovely event; I go every year. For those of you who know me, you know that I do more than just crypto. I actually have multiple companies, including a regenerative medicine company. I work in synthetic biology and have a clinic that takes care of over 11,000 patients. Obviously, we also have the cryptocurrency portfolio. I'm a bison rancher and a contractor, indirectly, through my company, Hoskinson Contracting. My brother is actually a licensed general contractor, and we have several hundred people doing dirt work and concrete work. In fact, we have 92,000 square feet of projects in Gillette, Wyoming, this year, all internal, and we have many external projects for people across South Dakota, Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming.
I go to World of Concrete every year to get a better sense of where the concrete industry is going and to stay updated with the state-of-the-art technology. World of Concrete is the largest concrete convention, with tens of thousands of people and thousands of vendors. It’s an incredibly busy place, and it's nice to go somewhere where I'm not recognized at all. It keeps you young and youthful, especially when you take the classes and learn new things. For example, today I learned all about why concrete cracks, where it cracks, how to prevent cracks, and how to manage them when they do occur.
I also had a great chance to attend a cold weather concrete pour in Gillette, which is an important aspect of the industry. Some people were commenting that there are all these events going on, like the presidential inauguration and the gathering in Davos, asking why I wasn’t there. The thing is, Cardano has become so big and versatile that it is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Some people think that attending Davos is important because the elite are there. Well, there’s an organization within the Cardano ecosystem that values that and attends every year since they are based in Switzerland, so we are represented if that’s your cup of tea.
As for the inauguration, ten people from my company and those affiliated with it attended. JJ Syler, my chief of staff, led a delegation with Joel Tner, our CLO, and Cynthia. We also had Sam Leathers, whom you all know and love from the Cardano ecosystem. It was an honor to be there. Craig Ramsey, head of my security detail, was also present. They got to meet all kinds of interesting people, hang out with the cabinet, and attend the crypto ball, doing all that gala stuff with the black tie.
I'm here at World of Concrete and also because we rented HyperX Arena for Hydro Doom, the championship. All of these things happened at the same time, and everybody had an opportunity to go out, be themselves, and do interesting stuff. That’s the point about decentralization and who we are as an ecosystem. While I’m here, the fork is underway; it’s almost done. In just a few days, Chang Plus One is coming in with the PMAN hard fork, which will result in activation in the DS, adding an entirely new governance layer to Cardano and a whole new generation of decision-makers.
When we look to 2025, it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure for Cardano users. If you have a particular view of how the world should run or a specific set of politics, the tent is so big that you will find organizations and people who agree with those particular politics and worldviews. That’s how it should be. We’ve become so partisan, divided, and filled with anger and hate that we often live in a world of us versus them. We say either this person agrees with everything I believe, or they’re the enemy and must be destroyed.
It’s pretty amazing that the inauguration of Trump and World of Concrete all happened at the same time, and we’re represented in all three places. We carry the Cardano flag with us, which is pretty special. It means we’re moving the ball forward, getting things done, and this is who we are. People seem to think that you have to pick a side, but I reject that notion. I don’t think you have to. What you need to do is wear your integrity and principles on your sleeve, keep working, and keep pushing forward.
For me, I love building things and thinking about things. La Glov Smill wrote a lovely book and mentioned that concrete is the second most used substance in the world, right behind water. It’s one of the most important industries that unifies all of humanity. It doesn’t matter if you’re from North Korea, Israel, Russia, China, or America; all of these countries pour concrete. Understanding this industry and the challenges it faces as it innovates and becomes more environmentally friendly is crucial. Blockchain has a role to play there. The work doesn’t stop, and it’s actually one of the most innovative industries. They have things called crystalline admixtures that form crystals to absorb water, making your concrete more water-permeable and preventing cracks. It’s remarkable to see all the new technology coming out. They even have hemp fibers that they put in, which are microfibers, and they have macrofibers like steel that change the properties of the concrete, giving it much more tensile strength.
It’s amazing to witness all of this, and it’s good to be a student again, to learn and relate to people. They have no idea who you are; they treat you just like an everyday person. You can say, “What do you do?” and they might respond, “I’m a finisher,” or “I’m a ready-mix operator truck driver.” These types of interactions keep you humble and grounded. People who need to network with the elite are doing that right now because the elite are necessary, at least for the time being. They’re having all those conversations.
Politics is so serpentine; there’s a lot of pay-to-play going on right now. Many people have cut multi-million dollar checks to attend special dinners and pretend that somehow that buys them the future. I refuse to believe that the future belongs to just a few. Over the next ten years, we’re going to see the biggest change in human history across every aspect of society—from how we communicate with each other to how we work and where value is created. The only way we’ll get out of this in a desirable way is if we learn to listen to each other and have enough humility to know that we don’t know what the future will look like.
So, you show up to work every day, do your best, read, and try to connect with people. I can think of no greater hell than attending some of these formal events. I’m utterly useless at them because I reject the notion of them. I appreciate the legacy, history, and tradition of these events, but I’m not very good in a tuxedo and bow tie. I don’t really like networking. In some cases, I call people out. There was a particular person who was on the Epstein client list, and when I was at a black-tie event and they introduced me to that person, I said, “Weren’t you on the Epstein client list?” He wasn’t very happy about that and walked off fuming. The person I was with said, “Charles, you can’t say that; you can’t do that.” I said, “Why not? Nobody does.” I tend to say what I want and mean what I say. I guess I’m supposed to grow up, but I never did. I’ve always stayed the same and been the Charles guy.
That’s why I go where I’m most useful, where I have an opportunity to build and create, and where I can get to know people for who they are, setting aside all the pretense. There are other people who are chameleons; they can step into those environments and are very good at diplomacy, never saying what they actually mean and guarding every word. You know what? Those people are in our orbit too, and they do a lot of great work. The end result is always the same, whether you’re completely genuine or entirely diplomatic. At some point, you get to sit down for a private meeting, and that’s not what happens at those black-tie events. They’re for posturing, like overpriced peacocks.
You come to the ranch, you go to their office, you go to dinner, and you sit down for a real conversation. You know what they ask? It’s the same thing that everybody’s asking on Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman. They want to know what happens next. What do we do about AI now that we have GPT-3 coming out? What do we do about all this new technology? What do we do about humanoid robots that will be in the labor force in just a few years? What do we do about China and the rise of this superpower that seems to be marching us towards a Thucydides trap? What do we do about the energy crisis? What do we do about overpopulation? What do we do about weather and climate change?
Everybody has a different opinion. Some say it’s not going to be a problem, while others argue it’s so existential that it will be the guiding narrative of humanity for the next 50 or 100 years, and they react accordingly. But the only way to make progress is to have the conversation. At some point, policy has to be written. Every policy in the United States of America, and by derivation the world, is under scrutiny at the moment. The whole social contract of the governed and the governing is changing, and it’s changing right before our eyes. We’re asking foundational questions like: What do intelligence agencies really do for us? How should law enforcement work? How should governments make decisions? When and where is direct democracy actually better than representative democracy? What does representative democracy mean, and who really gets to decide who’s in charge?
These are the questions people are asking right now, and that’s one of the reasons Cardano exists. I didn’t build a cryptocurrency just for the sake of having one; I built it as a layer for the world to use to change its political, economic, and social systems. It’s the place where voting happens, where the money lives, and where the conversation can occur without fear of censorship. Our technology today, January 20th, 2025, is the best it’s ever been. Our roadmap today is the best it’s ever been. We have a clear vision of how to capture the future and where value creation will be—not where it is today, but where it will be in five, ten, or fifteen years. We know how to do that together because we have the best governing system ever created for the cryptocurrency space.
The very fact that we can have this level of diversity, disagreements, and fights while still making progress and pushing forward is a great example of who we really are at our core. I know who I am, and I’m just going to keep fighting the fight, keep innovating, and keep building. We have big DeFi coming this year. We’re going all in on scalability technology like L1 and Hydra, and we’ve demonstrated time and again what can be done and where that’s going to go. It’s about time that Cardano is no longer an island; let’s make Cardano a peninsula again. We have to get the integrations done, and we will. We’ll get the stablecoins we need, the oracles we’ll need, and we have meetings with all the big players. We’ll find a way forward.
When one person lets you down, others can step up and try hard. If they let you down, other people can step up too. We’ll figure out a way together to get this where it needs to be. Yes, it’s going to be expensive and time-consuming, and there will be things we don’t like or admire or think are disgusting in the industry. We, as an ecosystem, have to make a decision together about what we tolerate and what we don’t. The difference between us and others is that we make that decision together and in the open, and people are held accountable accordingly. As long as that’s the case, I don’t see how we lose because there’s a reason for us to win. We brought everybody along for the ride—not just the few on behalf of the many, but we brought everybody along.
It’s imperfect, and many people listening will say, “Yes, but what about this thing that happened that I don’t like?” Well, just keep complaining about it because that’s how you make change. Eventually, people will agree with you if you’re right, and if you’re wrong, you’ll eventually see the light as history moves forward. We’ll all figure it out together, and that’s what keeps me going after so many years in this industry, through so many ups and downs and chaos. If you told me when I was 25 years old that a decade and a half later the president of the United States would launch his own cryptocurrency two days before the inauguration as a meme coin, I would say you’re stark raving mad.
Now we’re here, and we all just have to understand and appreciate it. What does that even mean? I guess it’s a political tracker prediction market on the power, prestige, and capability of the president. If the number goes up, I guess the president is worth more and more powerful. If the number goes down, the president has less influence and power. Maybe that’s one way to look at it. If you don’t like them, you can look at it a completely different way. That’s the magic of the industry: the rules are not written yet, so we’re all just moving along and discovering things in real time. Some things are really good ideas, and some things aren’t.
But would you have it any other way? More importantly, would you want a system where people tell you what you’re allowed to think, allowed to do, and ultimately what’s a good idea and a bad idea? We have that; it’s called the legacy financial system. That’s the system that gave us all the wars, the 2008 financial crisis, and Bernie Madoff. That’s the system that has made all of us poorer, that has made every generation less prosperous than the one before it. When you really think about it, I’m a child of the 80s and 90s. I was born in ’87, and just a year later, The Simpsons launched. I grew up with that show, and many people in my generational bracket, including now the vice president of the United States, can relate.
As a child of that time, I remember very fondly that Homer Simpson, an uneducated blue-collar worker, could have a stay-at-home wife, three kids, two cars, and a three-bedroom, two-bath house. He could afford it. That wasn’t a fantasy in 1988. Now, when we look at the average couple in 2025, both can be college educated, and they can barely afford the rent of an apartment, much less children. Think about that. Despite the fact that productivity has gone up by an order of magnitude, we have the internet, cell phones, and all these massive improvements in computers and AI. Our capability to produce more has increased dramatically, yet the standard of living has gone down.
The reason is simple: they stole the money. Inflation stole our prosperity, and debt stole our prosperity. The old guard of politicians looks you in the face and says it’s some evil millionaire and billionaire class. I’m old enough to remember that Rockefeller was a long time ago, and somehow America got prosperous despite the baronial age of robber barons in the 19th century. Somehow, America was able to survive that and thrive, allowing people like Homer to buy that house. Yet now, when we look to 2025, they can’t. Something’s wrong, and it’s the money. That’s why crypto exists. That’s why crypto is the last resort. It is the people’s money.
The fact that in such a short period of time, since January 3rd, 2009, we’ve gone from rebels, malcontents, and criminals to being welcomed with open arms at the highest echelons of power—so much so that now the most powerful man in the world just issued his own cryptocurrency, for better or for worse—is an indication of how powerful this technology truly is and how it eclipses us all. We should always remember that we are never leaders in this; we’re just foot soldiers, no matter how great we think we are.
Some people will put on tuxedos and work there, some will put on suits and work in the mountains, and some will be right here in Las Vegas learning about concrete and spreading the good word. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing; the end result is the same. We’re going to change the world, and we’re going to have a revolution together. I’m proud to be part of that, and I think you are too.
Thanks for listening. It’s going to be a fun time here. I can’t wait to see who wins Hydro Doom. We have a lot of great plans for the next steps beyond that. It’s going to be a long, hard year with a lot of work to do, but everybody’s firing on all engines and all cylinders. I am so excited to see what the governance of Cardano is going to do for all of us now that, in a very short period of time, all the lights are turned on. We’ve got the DS, the Constitutional Committee, the interim Constitution, and we get to have our first real big fight—the permanent Constitution and the budget. After that, we go conquer the world.
Thanks, everybody, for listening, and have a wonderful night. Cheers!
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