Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from rough and rugged Wyoming. I wanted to make a quick video to remind everybody that I am okay. I'm not suicidal. I'm not leaving the ecosystem or resigning from Cardano. I had so many people reach out to me this morning, including journalists as far-reaching as Bloomberg, asking questions about what's going on. Of course, the crypto media is irredeemably bad and loves scandal for the sake of scandal.
Christian Taylor had a lovely tweet, and I decided to do some more forensics and pull it up. He was curious about how bad the toxicity had gotten. Christian said, "Given yesterday's overarching response, I did some analysis of the replies on toxicity and possible coordinated activity. The results below are in the PNGs." Grok ran in about 130 replies. Here's the TLDR: raw toxicity—nearly one in three replies to Charles' comments is hostile, abusive, or profanity-laden, directed at him personally across six distinct categories.
Second, there is evidence of targeting. A subset of that hostility shows coordination signals, including identical language patterns, thin anonymous accounts, and cross-chain references that point towards organized amplification. If you take a look at the report, these are from 130 replies; 35 of the 130 replies are toxic and abusive. Some of the language includes personal insults, failed project accusations, financial accusations, mockery, unprompted profanities, legal threats, specific name grievances, and repeated identical phrases.
Here are some examples: "Such a [expletive] bitch-ass victim you are. Lose some weight, you narcissist. You're the only one crying when it doesn't get its way. LOL, this [expletive] lost the plot completely. Somebody should check on him." "You rattled, bro? You're the [expletive] reason we're here, you egomaniac. Stop [expletive] people down." "Most people genuinely want you out. Someone who doesn't cry like a baby and gets things done." "We just want Charles to get his own ego and god complex." "You're taking it personally is part of the problem, but you're incapable of comprehending that."
Then you have category two: failed project. "Cardano's dead. You failed. You failed. You failed." Category three includes unprompted profanity directed at Charles: "Fuck Charles. Now that you can convert your entire wealth into data and ride it to the ground, [expletive] you need to be in jail, bud. Hey, Charles." "Those pedo death cult ball worshipers must be stopped."
Financial accusations include, "You rugged us. You're a horrible person." There’s also mockery and legal threats. About 30% of all replies are hostile and negative, categorized this way. It's really impossible to meaningfully engage in those types of platforms with people.
I wanted to leave last year, and I thought for sure I'd be out. The problem is that X is really the only place in the world that contains timely, balanced news anymore. Reality is that you just can't get that from mainstream media. None of us would know Henry Nowak's name if not for X. When news events happen, they often occur on X hours or days before they're reported in the mainstream, and they're reported raw without a filter.
I thought to build an AI bot to run the interface. The end-user license agreement prevents me from doing that fully because my account would get deleted. If I label it as a bot account, it'll be down-regulated in the algorithm and have almost no reach despite having a million followers. So, I need to figure out a third option. I just don't want to be in a communication medium where one-third of the time things like that are said. It's just not productive for anybody.
It does take a toll on your psychology and on you as a person. I get that people are disappointed and angry, looking for someone to blame and attack to somehow make their anger better. I understand that Cardano hasn't worked out the way that a lot of people, myself included, want. There are ways and options to fix it, but you can't fix things when you're not in a position to do so. It's not just about finances; it's also about emotions, will, passion, and other factors.
Having been in this for over ten years, there are things I'm deeply passionate about. Banking the unbanked is one. We have a project launching in the next two months, RealFi, that addresses that. I'm also passionate about making Bitcoin programmable, something I wanted to do since the Bitcoin education project, and we have a product coming out soon for that. I'm very passionate about proofs and privacy and all these amazing things. In fact, in just a few minutes, I'm going to join a workshop where I'm going to talk about that with the Midnight Ambassadors.
What I'm not passionate about is making the price of ADA go up so that speculators can dump it and move on to the next thing. It's never been my passion. I've never accepted that role. I've never once told you that is my job, and I've never taken any accountability for that. I'm also not passionate about making the KPIs of Cardano stronger. I don't wake up and say, "How do I make the TVL higher and the transaction volume higher?" Even if it were my job, I don't have the resources, mandate, or power to make that happen.
I am passionate about solving hard problems, like the blockchain trilemma, which I believe Leios actually addresses. I am passionate about deep research. Given how incredibly difficult it is to get our research proposals passed, which I always thought was the heart and soul of Cardano, it made me question whether the Cardano I'm looking at is the Cardano I thought it was or something else.
To lead you, there has to be a destination and a mutually understood reason why we're moving toward that destination. If you want a leader who can make the price of ADA go back up to the all-time high, I'm just not your person for that. I've never joined this game to make cryptocurrencies more valuable. I don't know how to play that game, and even if I did, the ethics behind it are deplorable. There are backroom deals and handshakes, disgusting politics, and disgusting people engaged in it. It reduces everything that makes these systems special, unique, and treasured to a number.
You can't win the game. Vitalik Buterin took Ethereum to a quarter trillion dollars. For most of my life, that was the value of companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, if not less. Now, that's not good enough, and he's a failure because there's no path to 500 billion, and then there's no path to a trillion. I'm smart enough and old enough to know that if you play the game of token go up, you'll never win because there's always a new person demanding the token go up even more. When it goes down, you get blamed for the free fall.
Cryptocurrencies have to be about something more than your avarice and your portfolio. If they're not, then I don't want to be in cryptocurrencies. What's the difference then between them and SpaceX stock or Microsoft stock or buying gold on the open market? You reduce all the things that make them useful and beautiful—the community and the social value of what they do—to a number. If the number goes up, it's better for everybody. If the number goes down, everybody's evil, stupid, and bad.
The last five years have been the tale of two Cardanos. When you look at the actual progress in terms of the protocols, engineering, diversification, and decentralization, we're massively ahead of where we were in 2021. We've done things we could only have dreamed of when I started the project. Leo's testnet is starting June 23rd, I think. When you look at it from a price appreciation perspective, we're in the toilet at 18 cents. It's a dead and failed project.
How can we live in a world where, on one hand, we've done an incredible job, and on the other hand, we're all failures? It's cognitive dissonance, and it's irreconcilable. The community has to sort it out. If this is a place where science matters, philosophy matters, and changing the world matters, people will be willing to invest their time, effort, and lives into making this work. If this is a place where only money matters, you'll lose everyone, including me. I just don't have any taste or passion for it.
You'll watch it die, and then the next brand, and then the next brand, and then the next brand. It's a time for choosing. There needs to be a collection of exoduses for us to get ahead. First, we have to leave X—not just me, but the community. It's a toxic hellscape that has become irredeemably bad. It's impossible to have any meaningful conversation or engagement in this place.
Second, we have to look at the incentives people have to stay—economic and philosophical for the people building things. It's not about getting rich; it's just about certainty. This ecosystem is willing to watch JPEG Store fail, Tap Tools fail, and many more to come soon. Some of the leadership in this ecosystem say, "Oh, well. It is what it is. This is what happens. People have to be economically sustainable. Move on, nothing to see here." That was the community lead at the Cardano Foundation. If you don't believe me, look at his tweets.
We have to change the management and have an exodus from that management. We need new blood, new ideas, and new people who have a lot more respect for those building right now who have sacrificed so much for this ecosystem to survive and thrive. Third, we need a new roadmap. That's what's causing the primary dissonance. When we had things like Byron, Basho, and Shelley to look forward to, we were rallied and unified. What's the next roadmap?
We have to have a destination we want to get to, and that destination probably has to make the world a better place, improving people's lives. If we have those things, I do believe we have a path to success. We can change anything. We can build anything. Cardano is not just a protocol; it's the people behind the protocol. Cardano is not just a token; it's the people behind the token. Anything can be done. New protocols can be built, new distributions enabled. We can stop something and start something else. We can even change the name if we want to. What we can't change is the people behind it. The right and file holders matter.
So, I'm going to take a little bit of time away from all these things. I'm going to keep working on Midnight, but I'm not going to make videos publicly, and I'm not going to do my interviews. I've already canceled a bunch of them. I'm going to stay off X and other social channels. I'm going to take some time to reflect, recover, read, and enjoy life. Throughout the summer, you, the community, need to do some fact-finding and soul-searching. You have to make some decisions about where you want to take this project and how you want to get there.
I could certainly be part of it, but you know what my red lines are. I have to be treated with respect and dignity, and I will only live in channels that enforce that. I'm no longer going to tolerate being called fat, a narcissistic sociopath, a cancer, evil, or that I should be imprisoned by anonymous people who are cowards. I think that's basic human decency. If any of you experienced this consistent attack of this nature, I think you would ask for it too.
I don't know why we as a society have become addicted to saying that public figures should just turn the other cheek. I can tell you this has an impact and an effect not just on me, but my family and others as well. I can't tell you how many people ask, "Why do they hate you so much?" and "How do you stand it?" So, I'm just not going to be in channels that do that anymore. It's healthy; it's self-respect. It's not ego.
There are definitely paths we can take moving forward to reform Cardano and get it where it needs to be. I'll put some careful thought into it, make some proposals, and share some ideas—some radical and some incremental. I can't promise you that this will return to $3 ADA, but what I can say is it at least gives the project a reason to exist and a reason to be excited about it and be passionate about it.
Some concessions will have to be made. If people are unwilling to make concessions or changes, then those proposals can't pass. In which case, I don't have any role or place in Cardano moving forward. It's not about taking my ball and going home; it's just about what value I provide. Would you work at a job where you don't feel like you can contribute? Would you build where you don't feel like your building means anything? Imagine building a bridge to nowhere, going to some remote location in the world and constructing something knowing full well no one will ever drive on it. How much passion would you have for that project?
We stand at a precipice as an ecosystem. Do we want to still be relevant in 2026? Do we want to showcase that we have something to say and do? Just because I believe in relevancy doesn't mean I am the only potential leader. It's my job to tell you where I think we can go and what I can do for you. Others who want to debate that, it's their job to provide alternatives.
What's clear is that what's going on right now is not sustainable—a toxic chaos of raw decentralization, anger, negativity, and cynicism. If people just offer naked complaints and their answer to every question is "no" and "wait," they're part of the problem. They need to go. They shouldn't be in leadership. It should be "no," and here's an alternative. It should be "let's try this instead of that." That's constructive. That's where compromises can be made, and that's where negotiation can happen.
I can't negotiate with a "no." I can't negotiate with a "let's do nothing." There's no way to blend nothing with something. It's either nothing or something; they don't blend well. So, I need some time. I don't know how much, but I'm going to think about it. I'm going to try to rebuild a place for the community to go where we can have productive conversations—maybe Discord, maybe somewhere else. That's where I'll be, and that's where I'll live stream into, not X.
Also, we need a place where we can discuss constructively the future of Cardano. The people who want to be part of that conversation are more than welcome. But in a moderated space, those who just want to spread toxicity and cancer are not welcome. They'll cite a violation of free speech, but you have chosen not to be there by your conduct. It's a community standard.
We'll propose some things and see what the appetite is. If accepted, we'll execute those things. If not accepted, we won't. But at least we can say that we tried and that there was a plan. Maybe an alternative will come in that's even better. Who knows? It's time for leaders, new blood, and new strategies. There are a lot of good bones and roots in what I left you, and there are a lot of good ideas still floating around that, if followed, can do great things.
There are three principles that I believe must be adhered to, regardless of where we go. We have to have a singular vision, and everyone who receives money must agree to follow that vision. The incentives behind that vision have to be appropriately aligned. There must be structures that can fire people who don't follow that vision. My biggest grievance with the Cardano Foundation is that, regardless of what PR they do or what tweets or announcements they make, it's impossible to hold them accountable at any level.
You have no say as ADA holders in the board. You have no say as ADA holders in how they do things, what they do, and the staff that are there. They're completely above and immune to any accountability. This is the worst mistake of my entire career—creating a structure that has such low levels of accountability. At least with them, you can vote against our proposals. There, there's no accountability. We cannot move forward with structures that rely on people who cannot be fired and cannot be held to community account. Full stop.
I just don't believe in any ecosystem that embraces that. You get, at best, mediocrity and, at worst, ego and malice instead of actual execution. There were ways to resolve it, but unfortunately, they've never been adopted. The lack of curiosity about those ways is an indication of that malice.
So, those are the three principles I think you need to follow. If we do those three principles, I believe any strategy we pick has a chance of success. It's just a question of how much ambition we have moving forward. Cardano was at 2.5 cents, and a year later, it was at $3. Things can change very rapidly. Mass adoption can change very rapidly. Crypto changes every day. The winners and losers cycle and rotate all the time.
It doesn't bother me at all, and proclamations of death this and proclamations of death that—if we're real, we can survive anything, including the loss of your founder. So, don't for a moment believe that Cardano is dead. To all the podcasters and others dancing, shame on you. You're pathetic. Go home. Honestly speaking, you're pathetic. You've built nothing, contributed nothing, and you dance on the grave of something that people believe in and dream of. You're sad people.
But that's what this industry has unfortunately decided to build itself on. I'm at a point where Cardano has to find a way to transcend the cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrency has given us meme coins, NFTs, scams, collapses, and Trump coin. Its brand is damaged beyond repair. We have to be something different, like Midnight is and many of these new projects are. What that is is hard to say; it's part of that strategy. But we need to escape our roots and transcend all of it. Then I believe we can survive and thrive.
Otherwise, we'll be dragged down into the same pits of sickness, decay, and cancer that we currently see, and all the value that remains will be stripped out of us like vultures tearing apart a corpse. I didn't spend the last ten years of my life to watch what I built be devoured by Karen.
So, this is the last video you'll hear from me for a while. As I said, I'm going to take some time to reflect and think. I hope everybody in the Cardano ecosystem does the same. These are healthy moments. As painful as they can be, they tell you who your friends really are. They also force you to admit who you really are, why you're part of things, and what you believe in.
My hope is that there are still enough people around the ecosystem and the broader cryptocurrency space who truly believe that we can build a better world and are willing to walk a path to
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