Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is March 27th, 2023, and I'm doing a weekly roll-up. It's a new type of content we've been discussing, trying to find the best way to do things. I've noticed that a lot of little stuff accumulates, and sometimes it's nice to put it all together and say, "Hey, what's going on?" Normally, I do this in my AMAs during the introduction, but we're exploring better ways to approach it.
First and foremost, this is the month of Midnight, the week of Midnight. The launch has been very successful, and we are in the final stages. The candidate Genesis block was minted on March 17th, and the F&Os have been building it up. All of them are stable, and we now have a fairly stable network running with empty blocks being made. Over the weekend, we're going to conduct hardcore load testing as the final stage of the launch. We're still on schedule for a Q1 launch, and we'll have more to say as we get a little deeper in, but everything looks pretty good. It's been a long road, and where we started a few months ago to where we are now is pretty exceptional.
The challenge when building a cryptocurrency with many components—like the network stack, consensus protocol, ledger logic, and smart contract languages—is that they can get out of sync with each other as people fix things or add new features. When you do a launch, you have to pick a snapshot of some collection of them and get them all to work well together. However, everyone keeps wanting to update because there's always something they want to sneak in or some feature that someone wants, like the ledger V8, which broke ledger V7. That's really what this launch is about: taking a snapshot, pulling all the pieces together, and getting it done, which we did. The team is doing a phenomenal job, and we're really happy about it. We think it's the best launch we've ever done. I've been involved in four of them, and every time, you still get that same warm feeling.
It's important to understand that this is a guarded launch, which means it's mostly for power users, application developers, and full node operators. It's a major milestone, but it's not the launch that will flip a switch and turn on all the DFI, with everyone using Midnight every day and 400 dApps launching. That comes a little later, but not too far out. You have to build this like a house: first the basement, then the first floor, then the second floor. The infrastructure basement includes questions like: Do we have a stable network? Is that network making blocks? Are there no memory leaks? Is block propagation time good? Is finality operating within the expected windows? When we compile smart contracts, can they be deployed and run? Can we load it and test it at scale? All the things we think are true are true. Then you add some dApps, then the next thing, and you walk your way up the ladder. That's the only sensible way to do it. Otherwise, you're playing with fire, and I don't like dousing myself in gasoline and lighting myself on fire.
So, everything is going very well, and I'm very happy about it. We have a lot to say, a lot of demos, and other things. We're moving to a two-week demo cadence to showcase new features and functionality. April is going to be a very exciting month because we get to showcase the art of the possible for the future. The network is live, and people can start using it. We're already generating dust, which is great. We're trying to build a better workflow for dust generation to make it as one-click as possible for Lace users, among others. We're really happy about that. It's cool to have this dual tokenomics, and it's the first time ever that something on Cardano is interacting with a full layer one somewhere else to generate something there.
Congratulations to the Fluid team for achieving the first trustless swap between Bitcoin and ADA. That was a major accomplishment. I retweeted it recently. Fluid tokens performed the first atomic swap between Cardano and Bitcoin on the mainnet, meaning native BTC was traded for native ADA. 0.0001 BTC was swapped for 50 ADA. Bitcoin is on Cardano! Bitcoin DeFi is going to be a huge topic of discussion for the industry as a whole and for Cardano. It's something that everyone is working towards. We have an internal project called Pogen, and Fluid has been at the forefront, doing incredible work. Congratulations to them.
About a year ago, actually a little over a year ago, we started establishing a presence in Argentina. This was the second time Input Output opened an office there. The first was in 2016, working with a partner called Atix, led by Alan Verbner. We were at the little Bitcoin center with the Rootstock guys and many others in the OG Bitcoin group. They came from BitPay, which had built a wallet called Copay, and I was a user of that wallet. It was great for multi-sig and worked really well. Some of the original components of Cardano were written in Argentina, but the relationship kind of faded as Atix was acquired by Globant. We always wanted to return and do something.
In 2024, we decided to reenter Latin America, using Argentina as our headquarters. We established an office, hired a team there, including Lucas and Mauro, and now the office is quite large and prominent. We had a lovely hackathon with the Cardano Foundation, the BuilderFest, in Buenos Aires, where they got to do a pithathon at the IO office. You'll see all the pictures; that's where we're at. We have a great community there now, with TX Pipe and dozens of others building in the Cardano ecosystem.
In 2024, as Milei's government was cutting many programs, we saw a significant opportunity in the government sector. We were curious about using Argentina as a launchpad for RealFi and other programs, as well as for development at a slightly lower cost. I flew down there in September or October of 2024 to help prepare for the constitutional convention and to meet with various people in the Argentine government. During that visit, we had many conversations, and a small group of people, whose affiliations were unclear, were running a tech conference. They suggested that we sponsor the conference to directly engage with government officials, including a sit-down meeting with Milei.
I thought, "Alright, it's not my first rodeo. I've done a lot of business in Africa and I'm still alive and not in prison, so I'm pretty good at sniffing out situations." They organized a tech summit, and it evolved from Cardano being front and center, with Midnight as the keynote, to a multi-chain summit. Instead of a one-on-one with the president, it became a round table, and then it was just a photo op. They also mentioned a proposal from a kid named Hayden, who launched Libra. That was the little something I referred to in a video I made in February 2025, right after the Libra scandal escalated. They presented a consulting agreement, suggesting that if we paid, magical things would happen, and we'd become the blockchain of Argentina. Initially, it seemed like a poorly constructed proposal with no deliverables, and it was clear it was either incompetence or a bribe. We politely declined.
The rest is history. Someone else established a relationship with him, leading to the creation of Libra. In February 2025, the Argentine press picked up my video and had fun with it for a while, but then it faded. Investigations were conducted, and it turns out the proposal I mentioned in February was subpoenaed. One of the tech firm's phones had the proposal, and the press reached out to me early one morning, saying they were going to publish an article in an hour. They asked if I wanted to comment on a contract discovered on someone's phone connected to Milei that mentioned my name. I said, "I know exactly what it is, and I mentioned it in February 2025. Is it signed?" They said, "No." I replied, "Of course it's not signed because we passed on the deal."
People were asking if we should subpoena me to speak before the Argentine Congress and name names. Well, you have your names now. The criminal investigations division found the contract, which mentions my name and various details. It's all quite absurd. They also asked about an audio file supposedly from me, but it turned out to be from a scammer on Instagram sent to Novelli. Kudos to Chelsea for figuring that one out because I don't even have Novelli's phone number. The only person I communicated with was Hayden.
I told the journalist, "If we had signed the contract, you realize there would be no Libra because we passed, and someone else signed, which led to Libra, right? There would be no scandal." It's frustrating because Argentina is ripe for cryptocurrency adoption. A hundred billion dollars of their $700 billion economy is in crypto. They have many young, crypto-native individuals working on cryptocurrency companies and building blockchain infrastructure. Their entire voting system, central bank, identity system, property registration system, payment systems, and credit systems could easily be transitioned to blockchain.
We were excited when Milei came into power because he expressed a desire for the private sector to take the lead. He said you can't trust the private sector with your identity or money, as they'll form monopolies and exploit you like Wall Street. The third option is blockchain, which offers agility, transparency, and a hybrid of government and private sector benefits. We were thrilled about this idea, but after the Libra situation, we decided to focus on our own initiatives.
Since then, we've built a great relationship with Globant and a phenomenal community in Argentina. We're excited about launching RealFi and other projects there. It's amusing to see how the media wants to create a scandal, even when there's none. They keep trying to get us to say negative things about Milei, but it's not my place to criticize another country's president. The voters seem to support him, and he has a mandate. He launched a coin, and while the circumstances may not be ideal, I've been around long enough to understand how these things work.
When David Sachs became the crypto czar, I tried to build rapport and help the U.S. government adopt cryptocurrency. I emphasized the need for objective reality and basic rules. However, David didn't pursue that approach, and now he's out. It's frustrating because you can't make progress through shady backroom deals. If people send us proposals, we never sign them; we just shred them. The easy route in Argentina would have been to pursue government contracts, but that doesn't lead to real progress. You can't build systems from dishonesty; you must start from first principles and be transparent.
When you look at Midnight, contrast it with other cryptocurrencies that have backroom deals with VCs. They expose retail consumers to the fallout of those deals, leading to a tired market. The markets are struggling right now because of years of scams and meaningless progress. You have to do real work for the markets to be strong. You must be honest with people and start from first principles. The distribution of Midnight is challenging; 12.5 million night falls every day to people I've never met, and some of them dump. It sucks, but it's part of the process. You launch on certain exchanges, and prices fluctuate, but that doesn't undermine the integrity and principles of the system. Those principles are what carry you through over a 3 to 5-year period.
We've seen a lack of integrity and principles in the U.S. during this cycle, and I'm glad we have a chance for new leadership to pick up the pieces. Crypto is a global phenomenon, and I agree with Milei's rhetoric that the private sector will drive progress. When it became clear that others wanted to do things the old way, I decided to focus on engaging directly with the people. I can host asados and hackathons more effectively than anyone can in a dark room with a contract. The people need to adopt crypto, and one out of every $7 in Argentina is in crypto, held in non-custodial wallets. That's a positive development.
I understand the media's perspective; they're tired too. Everything is a scandal, and no one is honest. The world feels chaotic. When a journalist tells me they're publishing an article in an hour, I can't help but feel skeptical. I've had my share of experiences with the media, and I know how they operate. They want sensational stories because they need clicks, especially in a competitive landscape with AI-generated content.
In conclusion, Midnight is going really well, and our efforts in Argentina are surprisingly fruitful. We wish Milei's government well, but I genuinely care about the underlying policy. I started with Ron Paul back in 2007, and I was there at the beginning of many libertarian policies getting accepted at the national level. I was the only one who truly cared about seeing a libertarian succeed at the nation-state level, and it was wasted by the incompetence of those around him.
We must avoid succumbing to the toxic political culture that has emerged. When someone tries to hold you accountable, attacking them instead of addressing the message is not leadership. We need to listen to criticism and learn from our mistakes. Accountability is essential. If you have power, you will make mistakes, and it's crucial to acknowledge them. We didn't launch smart contracts on Cardano as well as we should have in 2021, which allowed others to outcompete us. It was a collective failure, and I take responsibility for it.
We need to be honest and transparent, and we must let go of those who become counterproductive. Milei may not have been the typical president, but he found a way into power. Leadership requires recognizing when people are liabilities and making tough decisions. The industry as a whole must adopt this mindset. I'm a truth-teller, and I will continue to speak out about the issues we face.
Because he knows that he's going to get an exemption, it reduces competition, so it harms the whole industry. It's bad behavior. I showed all of you four different attack vectors that the Securities Exchange Commission could use today if this bill were passed to make every new project a security by default. The bill also removed all developer protections for DeFi developers. Who takes care of the Tornado Cash people and these other individuals writing open-source software? We can't live in a space where you have transitive unlimited liability. You write code, and people you've never met use that code in places you've never been to, and you're held absolutely liable for that. That's equivalent to writing a book, someone reading it, and then committing murder based on a character in your book, and you getting charged with murder. It's basically the same thing. In the 1990s, we had Supreme Court decisions that said you can't do that, and we decided just to ignore the rule of law. We tried to put protections back into the bill to protect people, but it was taken out. Again, incredibly poor leadership from David. It also means we can't support bills like this because once they are enshrined into law, you can't change them. The Securities Exchange Act of 1933 has been around for 93 years. I started this process, and let's change that. Let's create a definition of a digital security so we can take care of Brian and all the other guys. If they want to offer yield on a stablecoin, they have a stablecoin and a security token that would sit above it to offer the yield. If you have a digital security that has blockchain-based disclosure, 24/7 liquidity, and can trade on exchanges, and it's not like a normal security, would he care and hold up the bill? No. You bring him along. Super poor leadership from David for not recognizing that and not listening to people about it because it's a $10 trillion market, and BlackRock would like to be in that market, much less others. But no, we didn't do that, did we?
You can't change the bill once it's passed, not in this partisan environment, not with leadership at the top. They don't talk to each other; they talk past each other. You pass it, and we have it; it'll be weaponized in two or three years. So, I very legitimately say he's wrong. Then what's the XRP community do? They say, "You are attacking us. You are evil. You didn't back us." Guys, I did support you when you got sued by the Securities Exchange Commission. There are videos of me from years ago where I said it was the wrong decision. They said, "Well, why didn't you give them money or these other things?" Because they gave themselves money. The Ripple organization gave themselves a mammoth pre-mine. That's a fact. It's tens of billions of dollars now that they have access to. They didn't need any money. They had unlimited money for the rest of time to spend fighting the SEC, just like the EOS people did in 2017 when they gave themselves $4 billion. Your people at the top are well-funded. I didn't give myself 70% of the ADA supply.
What revenue do you think that $1.2 billion prime broker acquisition comes from? What revenue do you think the USDR comes from, and all the minting comes from? Where did the cash for that side come from? Are you paying $5 a month in subscription like Netflix, and it's coming in? There's a source for that. They didn't need our support; they could fight it. Were they fighting for the industry as a whole? Are they right now with the Clarity Act? No, they're not. But we can't have that conversation. We can't talk about that anymore. People's brains are damaged. Years of consumption of social media, cable news, yellow journalism, and poor epistemic hygiene have resulted in a population of people having trouble critically thinking. They're having trouble separating the argument from the argumenter. They're having trouble understanding that people can disagree without being disagreeable. They're having trouble understanding that everything you're seeing is the end result of layer after layer of marketing and propaganda, and you're expected not to open it up and look into it.
The Iran conflict is a phenomenal example of that. We're not even allowed to interrogate it at any level other than one of two options: it's wrong because Trump is pure evil and everything he does is bad, or it's right and you're evil for not supporting it, and you want every Jew in the world to die, and you think Iran is a great nation. Those are your two options. You could disagree with the war but not think Trump is pure evil, like Joe Kent is doing, but he's evil now because he's in that bucket. You could agree with the war but not necessarily be a Zionist. Maybe you think there's geopolitical value in starving China of oil or the United States taking the Strait of Hormuz and having some say over that and reducing oil exports to our enemies. It's a messed-up geopolitical game. There's a lot of nuance between those two poles, but we're not allowed to have any nuance anymore. We're not allowed to have any conversation. Either you're with us or you're against us.
You guys want an easy answer, like "Trump did this." Did he really? One man is so incredibly evil or so incredibly brilliant that he created this entire reality? He's a product of a root cause far beyond his ken. He's a product of 24/7 social media. He's a product of reality television. He's a product of the destruction of our ability to critically think. He's a product of the constant lies of the government, and no one goes to jail for it. When the government goes to Iraq and lies to us about weapons of mass destruction, nothing happens. In 2008, nothing happens. Scandal after scandal after scandal, nothing happens. The American people try to go crazier and crazier every election cycle. We went from every president being white to electing the black guy who'd never been anywhere near this thing and has Hussein as his middle name. That didn't work. Now let's elect the orange guy who's a reality television star and is so far away from government he doesn't even know how the government works. Oh, that didn't work. Now let's elect the dementia guy who might be a robot wearing human skin. I don't know anymore. Let's just elect the dementia puppet and maybe a secret cabal of staffers behind him can do things. Oh, that didn't work. All right, we'll go back to the demented orange guy and figure it out.
This is a cry for help. It's not choice. It's a group of people saying we're so done with the political system that we're going to elect people who make a mockery of the system. You don't even need a president who has a brain to run the White House anymore. That's what Biden proved. He has dementia. He can't speak, and he's just not there. Why are we here? The root cause is a bad governance system. Let's update it. We need a constitutional convention, and then we can update the Constitution. Anytime you try to change anything, what are you told? Be cynical. Be cynical. Be cynical. You're not allowed to change it. It'll never change because the royal "they"—we're never really sure who "they" is—can be the Jews, the Rothschilds, cyborgs, or the serpent people. There's always a "they." The "they" won't let you change it. Thus, the system will always be the way it is until it's not.
There's no "they." If you believe so strongly in "they," how come you know about them? If they're so powerful they run the entire world, every dimension and aspect of it, and can prevent anything from ever changing, how do you have knowledge of their operations and how they work but no one else does? You know, I heard it from Alex Jones. I heard it from this person. Well, why are they allowed to tell you? If "they" are so powerful, don't they control all the laws? Don't they control all the narratives? Any person who's even remotely close to the truth, can't they just kill them or turn them into a child molester, or put drugs on them and throw them in prison for the rest of their life? How come Alex has been allowed to tell the truth for 30 years and not die?
This conspiratorial thinking is relevant to our industry because our industry is just about truth. That's all it's about. One objective reality, whether it be real or manufactured, it doesn't matter. We as humans need it. We don't do well without boundaries, reference points, and some grounding of life and rights of passage. When we have it, society is stable, and we live happy, productive lives. We have purpose and meaning. When we don't have truth and objective reality, we're lost. One of the things that makes me sadder than anything else is looking at our pharmacy formulary and seeing how many young kids are on antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. It's so bad when you look at the numbers and the proportions. It never used to be this way. Why are all these kids heavily medicated? Because they don't have a world of boundaries, barriers, truth, and trust. They have a world of chaos, and they can't make any meaning of it.
That's why people have become so conspiratorial; within the conspiracy, there's order. You understand the truth, you know how the world really works, and then you know who the truth-tellers really are. So, you cling to them because they give you hope and meaning. And somehow, they will figure out how to get out of this. Alex Jones can't even get out of a vodka bottle, much less tell us what the new world order is really about. Blockchain is the only way we're going to get out of it. It's why I get sad when we have an opportunity to install it, and it solves all the problems, but it's taken from us by the stupidity of our own industry or avarice. It's taken from us by corruption. It's taken from us by our inability to organize or represent ourselves.
We don't really have a lot but ourselves to blame for that, to be honest. We've gotten a lot of gifts as an industry. In 15 years' time, half a billion users, trillions of dollars of valuation, and all the big guys got billions and billions of dollars. What they're trying to do now is permanently enshrine those businesses they have and make them Web 2.5. It's interesting; they'll make money from it, but it doesn't carry the torch of the philosophy of Satoshi. It's why I built Midnight. It's my last-ditch attempt to extend what I've already built with Cardano and things that came before it to actually deliver on what Satoshi promised.
I want a world where you own your own identity, your own wallet, and your own credit score. You are in control, and it's private. You selectively disclose to the people you want to disclose to, and only those people, your business, and nothing else. That's the world you deserve. I want a world where you can check the election system and verify your vote was counted, and the election system has integrity. I want a world where when you get some piece of meat from the supermarket, it has a QR code on it, and you can scan it to verify that what you think you're putting in your body is actually what you put in your body. How much trust goes into that organic food label? I want a world where, when you meet somebody for the first time, you're able to verify the things they're telling you are true and not confabulated. I want a world where you're in the driver's seat and can connect that to an objective definition of reality.
It's very expensive. It's very hard. This industry makes it so difficult to actually make forward progress on that because you have all these people saying, "We agree with you. We want that. But where's my cut? Where's my cut? I want 5%. I want 2%. I want this listing fee. I want this thing." And they dump on you after they get it. That's this industry in a nutshell. Then we have to say, "Why is retail not showing up? Where are they at?" I'll tell you: why would they? If we do this to each other, why would anybody want to go into the den of vipers?
So, there's a point to this rant. The point is your mileage may vary, but you get what you put in. We put the work in. The Midnight Ambassadors put the work in. Come Monday, we have a reset. Maybe Tuesday, but more likely than not, Monday. That reset allows us to look at the space with a new set of eyes and just let the past go. There is a lot of stuff you can be really angry about and hold grudges about. Holding on to that hate just eats you from the inside out. We need to let it go and look at the industry with fresher eyes.
This is the last quarter, if we let it, that will have a decline. We can look at the next quarter and beyond and say, "It's time to grow again. It's time to love again. And it's time to converge to a common set of principles." We have to stop looking to saviors, whether it be David Sacks, Donald Trump, or whatever person you believe in. We have to now look towards the principles. Saviors will always let you down. Principles never will. They're things you aspire to but never fully achieve. That's why. Saviors are people you outsource your autonomy, agency, and humanity to with the hope that somehow they'll take good care of you.
The best-case scenario is maybe they do it for a while, but at some point, they can't forever. Just like a parent always wants to protect their kids, they can only do it for so long, and at some point, you've got to let them fail. So, it's a reset. This is the last quarter. Let's look to the next quarter. Good things are coming. We're going to keep showing up every day. We're going to keep doing our job every day. We're going to keep being fired up every day. But overall, I think we can still win. Because at the end of the day, if we win, everybody wins. If they win, whoever "they" is, we all lose. Why would you sign up for that? Why would you be so cynical to think that that's what life should be about?
There's no reason we can't dream big dreams, and there's no reason we can't win. We just have to earn it. And it starts with us. Not me, us. You listening. Stop being cynical. Stop being pessimistic. Stop believing the future is going to be bleak and that everybody around you is evil and bad. You created this reality as much as everybody else by how you interact, what you consume, what you buy, who you vote for, how you express yourself, and how you fit into the world order. Little or big, we all have collective blame in this. We're not allowed to point fingers at other people until we look at ourselves and try to fix it.
It takes some courage. It's hard to admit that you may be wrong. It's hard to admit you made mistakes. It's hard to admit that there are problems, and some of those problems you created. I spend half my time saying, "You're right. I messed that one up. What are we going to do about it? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it doesn't happen again?" That's a lot of my life. If you start adopting that mantra, good things happen. People trust you. People respect you. People know that you're not going to throw them under the bus, and they know you're a person of integrity and character.
If you spend your whole time pointing fingers and blaming other people, saying it's this person, this person, and this person, you lose all ability to lead, and no one wants to follow you. Midnight is the product of tens of thousands of conversations, just like Cardano was before it. A lot of mistakes, a lot of false starts, a lot of ups and downs. Ultimately, as the person who pushed it along the longest, I own all those ups and downs, for better or for worse. I apologize for the downs, and for the wins, my job is to make sure we share them. All of you were beneficiaries of it.
The glacier drop: 95% of the industry had access to it. Top seven blockchains, eight different ecosystems. That's a good start, and no one had to pay for it. We just said, "Hey, be part of it. Take care of it. Here are these seeds. Plant them." Look how far they can grow, how quickly they can grow, and what they can become. If we all keep doing that, keeping that mindset, we're going to wake up one day, and these things are going to finish the job. Then we can put them into governments, and you know what? We can get rid of the corruption because we can finally hold them accountable.
Our children will never have an Epstein file scandal. Our children will never have unaccountable wars. Our children will never have trillion-dollar budgets with no oversight, no attempt to even audit it, and our children will have sound money. Thus, they will be in control—not "they," the other "they." The children will be, and their children, their children's children, and they'll look back at these times like we look back at the Spanish Inquisition, like we look back at the age of monarchy and the divine right of kings, and say, "God, how stupid were those people to voluntarily allow this world of fear, superstition, and division to rule them?" I want them to say that. But we have to earn it. It starts with ourselves, then our technology, then the utility of that technology, and how we adopt it.
No one is going to do this for us. No savior is going to do it. That's the lesson we learned when Trump became president. He promised us so many magical, shiny things, and he never delivered. All you people on the left, get over yourselves. We told you so. Do you have any understanding of what the people on your side did to us? They threw our friends in jail. They sued every cryptocurrency in the United States. They sued every exchange in the United States. Your people actively tried to destroy our industry. You think we're going to vote for your people when they do that to us?
We told you so about Trump. How are you any better? How are you any better? Get over yourselves. There's no moral equivalency here where somehow you stand on a mountain and look so virtuous. You're not. You do the same things. The uniparty operates in exactly the same way. You're just better at doing these things behind closed doors, and the media gives you cover. It's the same corruption. It's the same thing. Trump just does it out in the open because he doesn't care anymore. He doesn't even need the fiction of it anymore. But there's nothing here; it's exactly the same.
Don't for a moment believe you have any moral superiority. Not one moment. Own up to
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