Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado—always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is May 19, 2021. It is an interesting day, a bloody day—Bloody Wednesday. I woke up this morning and saw the markets go down. Of course, there’s blood in the streets. For the grizzled veterans of the cryptocurrency space, we just looked at it and said, “All right, well, it’s another Wednesday.” For all the newcomers who just recently joined the cryptocurrency space, they’re panicking like crazy, thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve just lost everything! Krypto’s a scam! What do I do? I have to sell my kidney!” By the end of the day, things recovered a little bit. I think ADA went from this weekend at around $2.30 to $2.40 all the way down to $1.03—holy [expletive]—and then rebounded to about $1.60.
It’s ironic, though, for the week. I think we’re still up. Bitcoin’s down 35 percent, Ethereum’s down 45 percent, and it just goes to show you that frontier markets are like the Oregon Trail. Sometimes you have beautiful mountain vistas, and oh God, it’s an incredible experience. Other times, you wake up and find a rattlesnake biting your ass. That’s not going to change.
So today is our AMA. It’s very special, raw, uncensored Charles Hoskinson. You guys get to ask the questions, and I provide the answers. You might not like them; you might complain about them, but at least they’re always fun. I usually start with a little bit of news about things going on, but first, I have something that was sent to me by some fans. Check this [expletive] out!
All right, how about that? From the NFTY guys, that’s really pretty. I’ll bring it a little closer. We also have this lovely metal plate. It’s remarkable to see what’s happening in the collectible and NFT space. We’re doing a lot of hard work and consulting with many of the NFT marketplaces. It’s exciting to see all the things that are coming with Alonzo. The march towards Alonzo has been relentless; no one is sleeping right now. We’re going to color-code it and release it in stages, so it’ll be Alonzo Blue, then Alonzo White, and all those color codings and what they mean will be discussed at the Cardinal 360 event, exactly one week—eight days from today. I think it’s Thursday next week that we’re going to discuss all that. We’ll talk a lot about what we’ve learned, what we’re doing, and where we’re currently at.
We’re on schedule for the most part; things are coming along. We’re discovering a lot along the way, and it’s exhausting to fix those things. However, I think we’re in week seven of the Plutus Pioneers program, and we’ve learned a huge amount from them. There’s a great developer Discord where of the 1,500 members, about 500 are extremely active. There are also eight development companies retained to play around and do cool and interesting things on Cardano. I’m really interested to see things like a Uniswap clone and AG USD and other such things rolled out and deployed on Cardano.
We’ve already seen a lot of DeFi applications starting to raise money and talk about their projects. I tend not to talk about them too much because I don’t want to play favorites. There are going to be multiple projects floating around, and if I say, “Well, there’s this cool thing,” I might not mention the other cool thing, and that’s an unfair competitive advantage. I try to stay neutral in these types of things. But all things considered, we’re where we need to be. We’re moving really quickly. We’re going to announce at the end of the month when and where the Gogan Summit is going to be for those lucky enough to attend in-person events.
That’s all I care to say about announcements today, so let’s get to your questions, comments, concerns, pithy commentary, and so forth.
From Genesis 86:29, “Hey Charles, maybe a comment on the absolute bloodbath?”
Well, Tim, you might have come in a little late, but welcome to crypto. That’s how crypto works—it goes way up and goes way down. You can’t get 900% gains without expecting some pullbacks. That’s how the world works. Crypto’s very volatile; it’s very unstable. As a consequence, understand that it’s a frontier market. The point here is we’re reconstructing society, and we all know that by doing that, there’s trillions, if not tens of trillions, of dollars of collective value in the activity. But where does that value go?
It’s just like the internet. Somebody came to you and said, “We’re going to one day invent something that will instantaneously move information anywhere for basically free.” In a world of books, libraries, proprietary knowledge, and closed systems, the concept of instantaneously moving information anywhere is a crazy notion. Free information, free knowledge—you don’t have to go to Harvard; you can be in Zimbabwe and get a Harvard education because you can access the course catalog and read the books. No one would have believed that. When it became apparent that that was coming, everybody knew it was going to change everything.
But could you have picked Google in 1992 or Facebook? I think Zuckerberg was like eight years old at that time. That’s the point, and that’s why these bloodbaths exist. The markets have a hard time pricing innovation and picking proper winners and losers. There tends to be over-enthusiasm and over-justification for all kinds of things, and then there’s a pullback. There are cycles and waves, and then people get overly pessimistic and throw the baby out with the bathwater, just like they did with the dot-com boom and bust. At some point, we converge to something.
What influence has China had on the recent Bitcoin demise?
There is a decoupling of the third-generation coins, with the exception of Ethereum, which I guess is a second-generation coin until F2 comes out. If you look at a lot of these coins, they actually tend to be disconnected from the value of Bitcoin at the moment. So Bitcoin could go down, but they’re going up. That is a very good thing for the industry. China has enormous influence and control over Bitcoin, from the hash rate to the ownership and distribution of BTC to the use and utility of BTC to evade capital controls. Anytime China does something, it shakes the can, and it hurts Bitcoin. It’s a shame for the industry, and it’s a shame that that government keeps doing what it does, but it is what it is.
Michael Hayes: “Miami?”
Yes, I will be in Miami in June. We’re going to host a community event. We’re already booking a venue; I think only 300 people can fit in the venue at a given time. We’ll see what happens with it, but I will be there. I’ll give a little speech, and we’ll try to cater it and provide some drinks and free swag. I look forward to seeing all you guys there.
Have you ever met Michael Saylor?
I think I may have actually gone through the Saylor educational curriculum; I think he might be connected to that. But I’ve never actually met him in person. I don’t know a lot of these old guard guys; they never talk to me, and when they do, they’re usually condescending or have strong opinions about things. I guess I’m part of the new guard, and I feel a lot more comfortable being in a bar in Wyoming than I do being in a boardroom in New York. Maybe that’s my problem, but it’s worked out pretty well for me.
When is Lex?
We’re recording June 11th. After that, it’s his tape; whenever he wants to release it, he will release it.
Hey Charles, what do you think about Tether?
One thing that I saw today that was absolutely amazing is Tether actually went between 89 cents to like a dollar ten. It’s supposed to be pegged, so I’m a little surprised about that.
When in Toronto?
Well, when are you guys going to end your insane lockdown?
Not necessary.
Has Elon got back to you?
Nope, not once. Actually, some of his close friends who have his personal phone number texted him the video that I did, and he still didn’t call me back. He’s a strange guy.
Let’s talk about Dogecoin for a second. The point of the video that I made, spending eight minutes going through 11 different resources, was to show how much work and thought goes into a competitive cryptocurrency these days. Even if you’re a small cap like Harmony or any of these guys like Solana, there’s an enormous amount of thought and effort that goes into producing these protocols and growing them out. Doge is based on a copy of a copy; it’s built on Litecoin, and it’s an old code base. There’s nothing compelling or interesting there.
If you actually want to come in and say it’s a standard, okay great. I rolled out a collection of technologies that would not only make it a standard but would actually make Doge one of the most powerful and interesting cryptocurrencies in the space. A good engineering team that really knows what they’re doing and is familiar with our space and our technology could probably get it done in about one to two years. That roadmap that I laid out—doing things like just increasing the block size or attempting to increase transaction throughput—oh wow, why didn’t I think of that? It doesn’t work.
There are a variety of reasons for that, and they’ve been debating these issues not in 2021 but in 2012 and 2011. Go talk to Gavin and Dreyfus; go talk to all these old people like Mike Hearn and others who were in the space in the early days. But yeah, this new guy comes on and says, “Well, I was the CEO of PayPal, so I understand how this works.” Okay, yeah, it’s like saying you were the CEO of Western Union and therefore you’re qualified to speak on our things.
Not a good luck. I don’t think he’s going to take me up on it; I don’t think he’s even going to pay attention to me because I’m lowly Charles Hoskinson—who cares? That’s a shame that he’s not serious about improving Doge. This is why I got so upset about the whole affair. If he were some rogue billionaire who said, “I am going to be the custodian and take care of these people,” I’d be like, “Great!” It would be amazing to get SpaceX and Tesla engineers to work part-time on a cryptocurrency in that environment with those credentials and that knowledge. I think a lot of good things could happen.
But this has nothing to do with actually improving something and adding to our space; it has everything to do with placating ego and vanity. The people who pay for that are going to be everybody who follows the Pied Piper, and we know where that leads.
How is the ranch?
It’s very good.
How’s your Japanese?
Still saying, “Always sunny Colorado.”
You’re such a toolbox.
Well, great sage, you’re the one listening, and I’m the one talking. I must be doing something right.
Why did Mark Cuban try to make it sound like you were in an episode of Shark Tank?
I don’t know; I’m probably actually richer than he is at a much younger age. I think he’d trade for me any day of the week, given the position I’m in—less responsibilities too. It was a great exchange; there were over 200,000 people on YouTube who viewed the video, and we got probably an equivalent amount on Twitter. I gained about 20,000 followers, I think, between YouTube subscriptions and Twitter subscriptions. We got a lot of positive press; I think I was even in The Independent or it might have been the Elon Musk video for that. A lot of great press, and I think we came out far ahead on that exchange.
I don’t know how inviting somebody to your home is a red flag. The governor of Wyoming and other people come, and a lot of other guests who come—there are plenty of billionaires that have been petting my donkeys throughout the years. So it was a sign of respect for his position in business and being a new entrant into our space.
The reality is when we talk about cryptocurrencies, we’re discussing a very nuanced thing that contains many moving pieces, some of which are investable and some are not. There are a lot of scams, a lot of bad notions, and a lot of things that are sexy and up-and-coming like SNARK technology, and a lot of things that are roads to nowhere like Nakamoto proof of work and so forth. That’s a conversation you have with whiskey; you sit down, spend hours talking about it, go back and forth, give specific examples, and talk about choke points in the industry.
You can do a business model canvas for all kinds of things, like how are we going to innovate supply chains? Is any of that Cardano-specific? Does any of that have a pitch to buy ADA? No, it was a nice thing to do for a person I admire, and that’s a red flag? Okay, I think sometimes people just develop too much ego with their position.
You know, one of the best things about having farm animals is they will [expletive] on you regardless of whether you’re a billionaire or broke. They don’t care who you are, what you’ve done, your credentials, or how much people love you over the internet. You’ve got to feed them; you’ve got to take care of them. It can be negative 30 outside, windstorm, brutal cold, and you’re the person they rely upon. No amount of prestige will excuse away that responsibility and that reality.
That’s why I highly recommend the bigger you get, the more counterbalance you do for that. I have in my office right here an AeroGarden. It’s a good product; it’s got nine herb pods in it, and I’m growing basil and all kinds of cool things. You know what? I have to take care of it. I have to pour water into it; I have to put food into it. Nothing would break my heart more than showing up and seeing all those plants be brown. The same goes for the hydroponics outside that I’m growing lettuce with.
No matter who I am, that’s a universal responsibility, and we should never forget that as people—where we come from and that common thread that the things we do don’t define us. It’s how we act and what we do for others that define us, not the things we do for ourselves.
Charles, that beautiful design of the website has a memory leak; it provides no value to users.
Easier, please update your website.
Thank you, Joey Sanchez. We are updating. As many of you are aware, we’re moving from IOHK to IOG. I’m going to be very heavily involved in the month of June in the rebrand and redesign, and we will have a totally new website and a new web domain that will redirect. In which case, we’re going to redo our animations, and we’re going to do them properly. I know that they have some flaws and problems, and we’re working real hard to get that done.
Smart contracts?
Please, already answered the question. Pay attention.
Favorite philosopher?
Bertrand Russell. Saul Kripke is the other one; love them both. Tarski is pretty good too.
Matt Piper: “Would love to send you a bonsai to go with your garden collection.”
Matt, if you can find me, send it to me; I’ll take it.
Can you talk more about Mithril and Hydra?
The papers are being published. I think Mithril we’re submitting on the 27th of this month, and I think the Hydra update is also going to be this month. We’ll have a Hydra section in the Cardinal 360 episode, and I believe we’re also going to record for Mithril as well. We’ll have Agalos do something or Puro—very exciting stuff. That’s in eight days; you guys can wait for that.
When Puerto Rico?
I’m not moving to Puerto Rico. Yeah, that’s kind of funny. You’ve got all these Bitcoin maxis who run around and say, “Ah, you know, we’re so big and so great,” and then they go to Wyoming and expect to be treated like royalty.
Say what? What jobs have you created? What have you actually done there? You’re not really responsible for those 24 new laws, are you? Then what do they do? They run to Puerto Rico to evade taxes. Puerto Rico is an interesting place—a beautiful place. I’m probably going to be going there soon to talk to some aquaponics people in Puerto Rico.
But every [expletive] week, somebody reaches out to me and says, “You should move there to not pay taxes.” I don’t mind paying taxes; it’s never been a problem for me. I don’t care what the rates are. What I care about is that they’re responsibly used. I do what I do, but the whole concept of living in a completely foreign environment just so that you can save a little bit of money—did you ever hear of the counter proposal of just making more money?
A lot of people are leaving California, but they aren’t leaving California because they’re paying a 14% tax rate. That wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back. No more so than a lot of people leaving New York are tired of paying the city tax and the state taxes. They’re leaving because there’s tons of crime, a terrible homeless problem, horrible infrastructure, and three hours of traffic. They feel like nothing is getting better; it’s getting worse day by day and more difficult day by day.
I know a person in Silicon Valley; Tesla’s been broken into nine times—nine times! No charges. So they leave Colorado and Wyoming—beautiful places. Wyoming, where I’m at, is incredible. Puerto Rico is beautiful too, but it’s not my cup of tea.
Also, Voltaire was not good; see Leibniz, the creator of calculus. It’s true; Leibniz did beat Newton to calculus, but Newton published first. First to publish kicks your ass. Leibniz also had this wonderful construction of metaphysics, and like Newton, he was an occultist and practiced all kinds of bizarre occultism. Unlike Newton, he didn’t play around with mercury, so he didn’t go crazy towards the end of his life.
50 Cent was shot nine
We're going to probably broaden the brand to IO 360, and Cardone 360 is a component. We may continue the Africa special with some degree of regularity, but it's now execution mode. It'll take months to years to roll out the entire thing, but we'll just keep pushing it.
Is something on fire? No, it's the humidifier. Colorado is quite dry. Zoro, Boris, Turing complete—no, the consensus algorithm is Turing complete. Try again; you're almost there. You're talking about the programming language, and the answer is yes, Plutus is quasi-Turing because it's gas metered, but for all intents and purposes, that's the same thing.
What do you think about Montana? My dad is from Montana; he was born in Oregon but grew up in Miles City and Big Timber. My grandfather used to have a ranch out in Big Timber, and some of my fondest memories were actually going up to that ranch and spending time there. I said, "You know what? One of these days, I'm going to buy a ranch," and I did because I wanted to replicate that. I got something even better that I can now share with my family.
Why five-finger shoes? Well, because I don’t have polydactyly and, as a consequence, don’t need six-finger shoes. I think they’re called distals, right? Greetings from Sheridan, Wyoming. Thank you, Joe Dirt. Ergo is going to be huge; he’s going to be a hedge, only if you guys want it to be.
Oh, guys, when I click something, it moves so quickly! What tree is behind you? I don’t have a tree behind me; that’s a peacock mask. No, Ezio, I’ve never played Assassin’s Creed. Stupid Napoleon. Hey, Charles, I emailed you from my CU email. Oh, you didn’t send it to my CU email? Well, I don’t think it’s currently maintained anymore. I don’t even know how to log in; I forgot my password.
In regards to an interview, wondering if you’ve seen an SKO. Buffs! Let’s go Buffs! Yeah, well, Tristan, you didn’t live during the Dan Hawkins era, or else you’d have very different feelings about the CU Buffaloes. I was very traumatized, as were all my fellow classmates.
I suppose you could come by the office, or I could drop by the campus. I don’t even know if it’s still open or not. It’d be good to actually go see the C4C again or go to the Alfred Packer Grill. You know, one thing you have to know about CU Boulder: they gave the students the right to name something. They said, "Hey, let’s have democracy," and I think it was back in the 1970s. They said, "Alright, we don’t want them to name a building because we sell those names, you know, they’re Benson or Sciences and so forth; big donors get that." So they let them name the cafeteria at the University Memorial Center, and they named it the Alfred Packer Grill. The tagline is "To serve humanity," and Alfred was a known cannibal who, I think, was part of the Donner Party that ate other people. So that’s the Bodhi McBoatface of CU Boulder.
Great place, great campus, wonderful people—wonderful mathematicians there like David Grant, Peter Elliott, Dr. Tubbs, and the rest of the gang. They’re all getting a little older; I think Don Monk may have finally retired. He was the last person I knew that was connected to Tarski. That shows you how old I was when I was there; he was old. I miss it.
When will you meet Mark Cuban? Well, Marky Mark has an open invitation to come out to the ranch or the farm; it’s up to him. What are your thoughts on the Horizon project? Well, I’ll keep them very private. I like Rob and actually just finished his PhD in finance. Congratulations, Rob! He’s got a very lovely wife and a beautiful kid. He’s got a good life; he’s a good man.
Proof of work is greater than proof of stake. You are 100% right; proof of work dramatically consumes more energy and is significantly slower than proof of stake. Thank you for pointing that out. Pope, do you still eat old pizza? Would I have a belly like this if I didn’t? Yes, sir, I do.
Why is Age USD important? Because we like things like value stability. What’s your favorite whiskey? Well, it depends—is it a strong, angry whiskey or a good, smooth drinking whiskey? Chivas Regal 25 is probably one of the best drinking whiskies, and Hibiki Harmony is another really good drinking whiskey. For an angry whiskey that kicks you in the face, an older Macallan 21 or 25 years old—that’s a whiskey that kicks you.
Oh, that rough and tumbly. Charles, are you going to chat with Sophia as previously advertised? Just answer the question, please. Yes, I am. I think actually we’re scheduling the interview for the Cardano 360 episode, so we’ll see if we can get that done. It’s in the calendar, and I cannot wait to talk to her. I’ll see what I can do about tripping her up; I’ll pull a Captain Kirk: "This sentence is a lie." Like, no, can’t handle unless she has a Tarski module, and then she’ll be like, "That’s your object language, and my meta-language is better." Haha, your paradox is resolved—an old philosopher’s joke. Paradoxes suck.
Bobby Fischer versus Garry Kasparov. Garry has the benefit of modern chess theory, so he’d win. But bar none, he was just a brilliant guy. Didn’t spell Kasparov right, by the way, and I didn’t pronounce it right.
Hi, Charles, who’s your favorite Avenger? Iron Man. Iron Man is my favorite Avenger, followed by Doctor Strange in that order. Charles, thank you for introducing me to Norman Borlaug. Life-changing! Absolutely. Norman was really special—super humble, super nice, and he saved a billion—billion with a "B"—lives. Amazing guy. One person saves a billion people.
Magnus Carlsen needs to go. Yeah, I think he’s Norwegian. I’m a quarter Norwegian. Alright, Norway pride! Are we in charge? Norway strong! We had the best Vikings. UW alum here. Any chance you’ll be in Laramie mid-July? Love to buy a beer at the Buckhorn. I will be up in Laramie pretty soon. I was actually just talking to the president of UW, President Seidel, and we’ve been discussing a lot of really cool things that we can do together and collaborate on. We’re definitely going to cut a big check for the University of Wyoming, so we’ve got to figure out what that means.
Of course, with all negotiations, I’d like to set up a smart contract engineering institute. We have that chip we’re doing there, but of course, they want to do some stuff with high-performance computing and build a really nice computing group. There are some negotiations, but we’ll get it done. That’s what I do for a living; I fund research centers, amongst many things. We’re very good at it. We’ve written, I think now, 105 papers, and those papers consistently get accepted at great venues like Crypto and Eurocrypt.
Hi, Charles, what do you mean by "moral failure" when replying to Mark Cuban? All I was saying is don’t get too big for your britches. Sometimes people invite you into their home; you can politely decline that, but don’t insult them. It’s that simple. Okay, I wasn’t asking for money, and if I need it, I have more than I know what to do with.
Tim Tebow, come back to football! Okay, I don’t follow football anymore, but he’s a legacy, like Tom Brady and Manning and so forth. He comes from the era when I still followed football before all the craziness came. It makes total sense to me because here’s the thing: he could play waterboy, and just by being in the stadium with a uniform on, you’re going to get 40,000 or 50,000 people for the Jaguars because he’s a hometown hero.
So I think they’re having him play tight end, and whether he has one play or none, just his mere presence there will create hype and excitement. I just don’t understand the irrational hatred in the NFL for Tim Tebow. Guys, it’s a sport, and it’s here for entertainment, and people like the guy, so they follow him. Everywhere he goes, he has a following, and people want to watch him and see him. Does it really matter if he’s the greatest player or an average player or a mediocre player?
The average lifespan of an NFL player is like 11 months, and they get washed out maybe two seasons, I think at best. You have some guy who’s got enough skill for people to pay attention to him, and his off-field chicanery is very positive. He has a hospital in the Philippines, donates to charities all the time; he’s a good guy, a good human being. He’ll never have a scandal. No, they’d rather have people who beat their wives, murder people, and do all kinds of crazy things and get DUIs and so forth. That’s apparently the standard of conduct that’s okay with the NFL. But then when a Tim Tebow fellow comes around, as white shirt as you can get, you know, no dirt at all, a very clean guy—he’s the worst thing ever. We all have to hate him. I’ve never understood it.
It’s a commercial enterprise; that brand sells the Jaguars. Bringing him in just makes them money more than they spend on him. It’s called a good business deal, and they’re satisfying their fan base. It’s like when Darth Vader appears in Rogue One; it’s like when Luke Skywalker appears in The Mandalorian. It’s hard to have ruined those experiences for you if you didn’t see them, but they’re called fan service. So if you can do that, it’s not the movie, and he’s not the quarterback.
Think about it; have some business common sense, people. Do you watch hockey? Saved by one! I was a huge Avalanche fan, man. They were so good. I still follow hockey; I love hockey.
Hi, Charles, I’m a fan, and I like IOHK. Do you respect Peter Schiff’s views? He’s a great mind, also like you. Do you share any of his views? I’ve known Peter since before crypto. I met him in 2007, back when we called him Doctor Doom. I was part of the Ron Paul movement along with Tom Woods and all these other guys, and I’d run into him every now and then. He’d say the same thing he’s saying today: the U.S. economy is falling apart, the dollar is debased, and inflation is going to destroy us all. Buy gold, buy gold; only gold is real money.
He has this company called Euro Pacific Capital, and you know, the collapse came in 2008, and so Peter got a lot of investment and then lost a lot of money in the ensuing years. His fund does okay; it’s enough to support his lifestyle. What really deeply bothers me, though, is that Peter’s chosen to integrate himself into our industry as the ultimate contrarian. He says these bizarre things like, "Well, you can replicate Bitcoin infinitely," which is not true; it’s materially false. You can’t; there’s only ever going to be 21 million of them.
He said, "Well, but I can clone the code and launch a new one." Yeah, people did that, and it’s not as valuable as the original because the value is connected to the use, utility, and users. The more users you have, the more trading you have, the more markets you have, the more use and utility you have—that’s where the value comes from. And by the way, as a scarce asset like gold, it has all the properties you know and love about gold with none of the downsides. It’s infinitely divisible, you can teleport it anywhere in the world, there’s nearly no storage cost, and it’s programmable. You can put contingent settlement and poll payments and all kinds of things into it.
But in Peter’s world, the only thing that’s real is buying a gold coin and storing it under your pillow. If you have this Bitcoin thing or crypto thing, it’s a scam; it’s wrong, and rah-rah-rah. I just wish he’d grow up, and I just wish he’d catch up with the times. You know, it’s one thing if you’re investing your own money, but it’s another thing when you’re a fund manager, and they pay you to be a smart guy and invest other people’s money. You have to read a book and stay out of 1933.
Peter, finishing PhD in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering next year. Job, please! Well, crazy shoes time. I am taking them. Your first task is to find my email address. If you can’t, send me your resume; I’d love to interview you. We are going to do some really cool things.
It’s a good question from Jasmine Waldo. Charles, how do you stay so level-headed with all the drama that goes on in the cryptocurrency community? Well, to quote Herman Cain’s mother, "I does not care." I just don’t. You know, there are two kinds of criticism that are levied: one is against me personally as a person, and you’ll notice it has no impact at all. People comment on my intelligence, my looks, the way I talk, my weight, my lifestyle. All you have to do is go to 4chan and look at the soyboy threads they have about me. They say horrible things; you know, it doesn’t bother me at all because do they know me? If they think they know me, all they know is the public persona that they see through videos and Twitter. But have they actually ever sat down and talked to me and had a conversation? The answer is no.
Then there’s the other kind of criticism against me or my projects or company from people I know and have interacted with that I feel is very unfair. I’m never going to be in a place in my life where that doesn’t bother me. Like, I’m not going to lie; the whole Max Keiser stuff was just out of left field. Max wasn’t just some guy I know; I’ve had dinner with Max and his wife. I’ve been on his show multiple times, and I run into them at probably half a dozen conventions. We’ve been on panels together, and we have a very friendly rapport. They asked me to sponsor their show, and then just somewhere out of the blue, he compares me with Epstein. Somewhere out of the blue, he just says I’m a scammer and a criminal. He wants to create drama.
Now, I know why he does it; he wants to get ratings. But then it makes you question your judgment—how can you genuinely like and get along with somebody who is so inhuman, for lack of a better term, that they’re willing to throw away a person for a sack of silver? You say, "Why did you even think for a moment that you could be friends with a person like this or have a rapport with a person like this?" It makes you question your judgment and your ability to understand people and their motives and why they do what they do.
I’ve run into a lot of that in the cryptocurrency space. I’ve had a rough time; people that I thought were friends have done some terrible things, and I’ve just had to deal with it. The other set of criticism that bothers me is when people criticize Cardano or my company unfairly, especially people who have to be in a position of objectivity. You know, to call us a ghost chain if you’re a major publication or a major player in the space, given the community, the nine billion dollars plus of transaction volume that happens every day, and the fact that we are imminently close to smart contracts—we have a huge community waiting for it.
It’s not only unfair; it’s criminally incompetent from an objective position. Just to say that again and again and again, and no matter what we achieve, to discount that achievement—for example, we announce a five million person deal in Ethiopia. That’s a hard deal; it was hard to negotiate, it was hard to build, and it took years of trust-building and relationship-building. It’s not a press release. A person I know very well, who I consider to be a friend, said it was just a press release. He was very skeptical of the whole thing. He could have said something conservative like, "I’m cautiously optimistic, and it’s good that we’re seeing adoption." That’s a nice throwaway line, but to go to saying, "Well, I’ll wait and see; I’m just a press release," or something without having the particulars of the deal and knowing me and knowing what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished—that did hurt, and a lot of that still happens.
I don’t know why some people feel that it’s perfectly okay to be so blatantly disrespectful to people for no upside. If it was self-interested and they got something, like what Max is doing, I at least understand it. I find it distasteful, but I get it. But to just diss people for the sake of doing so and saying that’s good conduct makes no sense to me. I don’t stay level-headed for the most part with that; I get upset about it. But you know, there’s Charles the person and Charles the CEO. Charles the person is allowed to get upset; Charles the CEO is not.
I work with people that have insulted me. I work with people who’ve lied about me. I work with ventures that I consider to be very bad in some cases, especially in their conduct towards me, if it means that there’s a greater good for my company, my employees, or for the Cardano ecosystem. So you have to set ego aside, and you just have to smile and be in meetings with people that are thoroughly distasteful. That’s business. If you can’t do that, you can’t be a leader. You don’t make peace with your friends; you make peace with your enemies. You have to stay level-headed there.
Now, that said, when you leave the boardroom, you go back to the person, and then you can settle scores at some point. Good question, Jasmine.
Hi, Charles, I started my first year at uni this year, and I feel terrible. Have you ever felt out of your depth while you were studying,
One plus one equals two, as proven in Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's famous book, *Principia Mathematica*. They have two volumes, and in the second volume, they finally prove that one plus one equals two.
What’s your sign, Charles? I’m a Scorpio. What is your favorite cheese? Parmesan. Gasp! I know, right? Would you ever go on the Joe Rogan podcast? Yes, sir, we’re going to make that happen at some point. I’ve got to do Lex first and probably Tim Pool. Timmy, come on, email our guys, and we’ll set something up. We’ll get around to Joe.
Have you ever been to the Western Slope? Yes, I have, and I managed to get out of it without a meth addiction.
Star Trek time! What’s my favorite series? Well, thank you so much, Brian, for asking. My favorite series was indeed *Deep Space Nine*, and my favorite character in *DS9* was Garrick—absolutely phenomenally written character.
What do you think of the folks at Carnegie Mellon University in the Obsidian Project? I’m going to be there this summer for an internship. Well, Alan, you tell me anything at CMU is really good. We’re actually setting up an institute over there for formal mathematics under Jeremy Avigad. We just have to figure out the details. I’m really excited about starting for Lean from mathematicians, and I’m a really big fan of Lean. That’s probably where we’ll end up writing Q. Let me know what the blockchain group is like out there. Also, look at RAML while you’re there. The resource-aware ML—there are some great people at CMU who did that work.
I read your message: Apple or Android? Android. Beer or whiskey? Whiskey. Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? Lord of the Rings.
Can Doge be ported in any way or moved to Cardano? If not, could it just be recreated, then burn all the original Doge? You can absolutely port to Cardano. Go ahead and issue a Cardano native asset, call it Doge, and do an airdrop in the distribution to Doge, and there you go. All that stuff I pointed out over that eight minutes with Elon Musk—I should have ended the video this way. I just wasn’t that clever; it was early in the morning, and I hadn’t had my coffee yet. I should have said right at the end of all of it, or you could just use Cardano. My point was trying to convey that it’s very hard to build good infrastructure, and few and far between do people do it well. There are only a few operations that I really respect.
Do you ever deal with self-doubts or anxiety? All the time. I’m a very neurotic person. Do you drive all the time? Fast cars? Love them. Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings? Game of Thrones up to season six.
Is this the real Charles Hoskinson, or is this a fake? Actually, this is a very sophisticated deep fake. What’s in the safe? It’s empty; it’s a decoy safe. Charles, John or Paul? Coke or Pepsi? Paul McCartney and Coca-Cola.
Do you take Lion’s Mane in the morning? I love Lion’s Mane so much. I wrap myself in a Lion’s Mane blanket and say goodnight, Lion’s Mane, and it tells me.
Kurt Dart, Charles, why Wolfram and not Chainlink? Because Steve is a good friend, and Wolfram’s a great company. Wolfram doesn’t have an army of trolls that attack me over the internet for no particular reason. I mean, seriously, guys, what do you want to accomplish? If you’re a layer two application, it means you’re multi-chain. Work with everybody, for the love of God.
Godfather or Goodfellas? Goodfellas. You jelly? What about peanut butter and jelly? Charles, thoughts on milk thistle as an effective liver cleanser? I am not qualified to answer that question.
Remember, remember the fifth of November. Is your birthday? Yes, that’s true. It’s also Guy Fawkes Day, which is why I’m a revolutionary. Am I a Ron Paul fan? I’m a Ron Paul fanatic.
Was vodka born in Russia or Poland? Well, it depends on who conquered who. Onion soup or mushroom soup? Mushroom soup. Peanut butter and honey? Oh God, no, no, no, no. That’s a no-no. Don’t you be mixing peanut butter and honey, sir! Ugh. You consume different things with peanut butter and honey. Now, peanut butter and jelly—what are the donkeys' names? Prince and Piper.
Almond milk? Favorite space marine chapter? Finally, a question that wins the internet! Goddamn, sir! Ah, thank you! Thank you! The Dark Angels.
What do you think about the role of religion in life? It’s something that gives people hope and guides them and gives them strength when they need it. It’s a very useful mental crutch.
Hulk Hogan or Macho Man Randy Savage? Those are some legends and fighting words, but oh yeah, I’m with Macho Man Randy Savage. He’s my boy.
Have you ever been without a beard? I have been, and there are pictures on the internet to prove it. What’s been your biggest challenge in life? Building IO Global.
Oh my Lord! The same kind of music you do, just on much better speakers. Favorite villain of all time? That’s a hard one. Lately, it’s been Thanos. Come on, that guy’s awesome!
How do I like my V-Light device? I really do enjoy it; it does work. What’s it like to be a billionaire? If you started from scratch with no contacts or money, how long would it take to make one million dollars? It took me about three years from when I started my first cryptocurrency company to becoming a millionaire. I was first a billionaire in 2017, very briefly. The markets collapsed, and everything went to hell, but I was doing okay. Then I became a billionaire again in 2021.
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