Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is February 19th, 2026. Where does the time go, my lord? I'm back in the office, and it's been a long trip. I went all the way through Japan, covering the whole archipelago. I was in Hokkaido, went down to Okinawa, and hit up Tokyo as the final stop before flying to Hong Kong. We had a lovely time at Consensus. I even got to wear a McDonald's uniform, which we called the McSpeech. We met a lot of people and made some great announcements.
People running the network, like Block Damon, Telegram, and Google, are involved, which is pretty cool for the Midnight launch coming next month. A lot of amazing roadmap items were achieved, and we made tons of relationships and partnerships, making significant forward progress on the Midnight side. It's great to see the network wake up and to have good leadership at the Midnight Foundation and the team at Shielded for really putting their noses down and getting the network launched. It's extremely hard to launch a cryptocurrency; it requires a lot of work. Having done it a few times before, I can tell you from firsthand experience that it never is easy. So, I'm really excited and proud that they put in the elbow grease and are getting it done.
On the Cardano side, we announced the layer zero integration, which connects Cardano to more than 80 blockchains, making Cardano no longer an island. It can now move liquidity, users, and value across, as well as USDCX. Shout out to Phil Disarro and his team; the user experience they're building for USDCX is phenomenal. It's auto-convert, so you can send straight to the exchange and back seamlessly. It's basically USDC, but the difference is we have privacy, and it can't be frozen. I feel pretty good about that. I think that's the best compromise we're going to get in the Cardano ecosystem for a tier one stablecoin of that nature. Layer zero opens up the possibility of eight major stablecoins as well, and it's really just a question of when and how. That integration is going to take a little longer because it's a significant one, whereas USDC is basically built for these non-EVM systems.
We're having a lot of fun with that. Obviously, Leios is still on schedule. We got to travel around with Mike, the product manager, Michael Splawinski, for Leios, and had many conversations about where we're at. The Cardano hard fork is happening next month, and the community is working its way through that. All things considered, we're pretty happy with the rate of progress of Cardano. The new Plutus version, the continued development of Aiken, node diversity coming this year, Leios this year, and all the CCI integrations are really pushing through. We have the Pythathon at the builders fest down in Argentina in March, which will be a lot of fun to watch as we integrate Pyth into our ecosystem. Finally, we have a tier one oracle in Cardano.
Things have a different timbre to them; they're moving very quickly, and we're getting things done. The markets are still extremely negative, and there are a lot of bots spreading negativity. Many people are just kind of stuck in the dumps. It is what it is. You can't really do much about it. You just have to work, put in the effort, and keep pushing forward. In the beginning, we said that Cardano would be the most decentralized and the most principled cryptocurrency in this space, including Bitcoin, and we achieved that. We are the most decentralized, and we have a phenomenal on-chain governance system. Now, with the launch of Leios, we've solved the blockchain trilemma.
There's a lot to do; many things we have to resolve and solve as we push through. The fact that Cardano can launch a billion-plus dollar project like Midnight, which has tier one listings and genuine excitement, means that Cardano can launch tier one projects listed on major exchanges and have major partnerships, like with Google. That is not an Ethereum thing or a Solana thing; that was done by Cardano. It's important that people remember that and realize that Cardano is still in the game, still fighting for everything.
The reality is that in the current space, there are definitely factions whose only desire is to ban non-custodial wallets and run all cryptocurrency transactions on permissioned federated networks owned and operated by large financial institutions. They claim it will be safer, faster, and more consumer-friendly, without all these scams. What they're missing is that this is literally a replication of the financial system that Satoshi and everyone who came after him was trying to escape. Unfortunately, they are making meaningful and sustained progress. If you look at the latest drafts of the Clarity Act and the people surrounding it, along with the launch of all these federated networks, which are VC darlings, there is no real intention to ever decentralize.
It's okay to launch federated; we did this with Cardano. But you have to have a path to convert that into a fully decentralized network. We did that. We showed how to do it. It took years of hard effort, and many people listening were involved in that process as stake pool operators. What's not okay is building a network that's forever owned and operated by five, ten, or twenty banks, who then lord over the users. Once they have absolute control, they can simply flip a switch, and you're at their mercy. They own all your money, and unfortunately, the system is moving in that direction right now.
There are those of us still fighting hard. Cardano Midnight is an example of an attempt to break free from that. It's hard; you're not a VC darling. They don't mention you in the reports, and you don't get a seat at the big table during negotiations with other banks. Yet, at the end of the day, it's a retail army. Our success or failure ultimately comes down to the level of cynicism humanity has. If you are cynical, we have lost. If you are optimistic, we have a chance to win. It's that simple.
The cynical people say, "The system's always going to be this way. It's rigged. Look at the Epstein files; they'll never be released. No one will ever be held accountable. The banks always rule us." If that's the case, what's the point? Everything's bad, and everybody's against you. Your whole life is being puppeteered; you have no free will or autonomy. You're a slave, and there's nothing you can do to get out of it. I can't imagine living this way and having this perspective. It's disgusting. You've surrendered what makes you human and voluntarily stepped into slavery.
Be optimistic and believe that maybe the good guys can win, and that you have some influence, however small, over that outcome. We're not asking everyone to be a courageous hero charging up the mountaintop and slaying the dragon, but just to believe that somehow, some way, we're going to find a path to where we need to go. This morning, Prince Andrew was arrested. That gives me some hope. I don't particularly care where that goes; it's something. It's hard to arrest a prince. There are many institutions whose only job is to protect people like that. The fact that he got arrested means that maybe, just maybe, today can be a good day.
When we look at the industry as a whole, it is absolutely hard to beat the people who print the money. On the other hand, those people have abused the human race for so long in so many different ways that you have to ask yourself why we follow them outside of fear. If we can get to a point where we just don't fear anymore, then guess what? We've already won. This is what all the colonies seceding from Britain realized. This is what everyone realizes when they step outside the shadow of tyranny. You have to have enough courage to not fear, and once you realize that you can win, you have to commit yourself to it.
This is not solely the journey of Cardano and Midnight; it's simply the good versus evil of whether you have personal power over your identity, your money, your voice, and ultimately the consent you give, or if this has been stripped from you and given to others whom you've never met, over whom you have no control, and whom you can never get rid of in the event that they abuse you. We have to take our power back, and that's what cryptocurrencies were built for: rules in a place that doesn't have rules, structure in a place that was structureless, and ultimately a system that holds everyone accountable, even me, even Vitalik, even Anatoly, all the people. When we build these things, we let them go; no one can shut them down. They will survive their founders and thrive.
When you look across all the major cryptocurrencies and the progress being made—from Ethereum with encrypted mempools to Firedancer with Solana, to what we're doing with Layer 2s with Cardano—we're winning. The technology is winning. We're getting more private, more decentralized, and more reliable. Step by step, we're gaining the power we need to run the world. That's an amazing thing, but that alone is not enough for us to win. It's a necessary but not sufficient condition. We also need an army to stand behind all these chains, to believe and keep the faith.
How the banks have been winning, how the people who want to centralize this have been winning, is that they stopped trying to put the people who built the systems in jail. They stopped suing people and using the heavy hand of the Securities Exchange Commission. Instead, they went to something much more foundational: they attacked people's belief in the legitimacy of the endeavor itself. They've convinced countless millions that cryptocurrencies as a whole are scams, that they will fail and serve no utility or purpose in society. That's sad. It's similar to totalitarian governments convincing people that they don't need free speech and that free speech is the enemy. They don't need the power of democracy and the ability to choose their own leaders and hold those in power accountable. Don't worry; the betters have it figured out. They've tried to pull that pernicious bait and switch, convincing all of you that cryptocurrencies are unnecessary.
They had their time, but they were a scam, and we now need to go back to the old control structures of the past. Never let them do that. Cryptocurrencies are more necessary today in 2026 than they've ever been in the history of the human race. I cannot find one institution left that has credibility. I can't find one movement left where the leaders are without sin, and I cannot find one currency issued by a country that's solvent. We are approaching 300 trillion dollars in global debt. The United States is committing itself to having over 50 trillion dollars in global debt over the next ten years. This is not a sustainable system; it never has been, never will be, and it's destined for collapse.
The response is to create a bunch of trillionaires and hand more money and power to them, with their armies of humanoid robots and AI replacing both blue and white-collar workers. We cannot allow a future like this, enslaving all of us to the debt of those who came before us. They have to get out of it, and cryptocurrencies are the only way we can regulate the behavior of everyone from the individual to the nation-state. All of us have to follow the same rules. That's a very basic and fundamental thing. Every critic of the cryptocurrency space has yet to acknowledge that basic reality. They keep saying, "Well, the numbers go up and down. Bad actors do things, scam coins are launched, and meme coins exist." Yes, but does the human race work better or worse when a system, by its design, holds people accountable and forces transparency?
"Oh, well, that may be true, but we can do that in other ways." How so? Really? Palantir is aggregating all of our information and creating the most dystopian total information awareness in human history to be used by authoritarians against all of us. Are we truly going to accept these types of things? They brag about it. The only way we can hold them accountable is by having systems they can't corrupt because, by their design, they're resilient. Yes, fifteen years into this, we're going to make mistakes, and we're going to have bad actors. But I will remind everybody that we never got a bailout; we never got an endorsement. Neither the government nor academia nor any other major institution helped us. They tried to kill us every single year, from the mocking cackles of Paul Krugman to Gary Gensler suing everyone. None of this was helpful. None of this provided the structures and wisdom we needed to step ahead.
When the US government did embrace us through the Trump administration, it was strictly for extractive means to take as much money as possible from us, not to help or aid us. I understand there are plenty of sycophants clinging to that, and they'll soon realize that glory and power are fleeting. When the power structures change, they'll be politely reminded that they clung to the wrong corpse. Despite the fact that so many have spent so much time trying to burn down our industry, we stood strong. We continue to thrive and grow under the worst conditions imaginable. Yes, despite the scams and the challenging markets, we continue to show that we can win. The technology will get us there, but the culture will finish the job.
We have to make some hard decisions as an industry. We have to be willing to take the hits, say no in the face of evil, and remind people that there are real cryptos and not real cryptos. If you have no means to participate in the governance of and control the running of the system, and another group of people you have no influence over can stop you from using the system and freeze your assets at any time, this is not a cryptocurrency; it's something else. While it may use similar technologies, those technologies have been reapplied to benefit the few at the expense of the many. We have to preserve and protect the foundations of this industry and where it came from: the ability to be your own bank, own your own wallet, have the power and say, verify and check transactions, and not have to trust anyone.
The chains and ecosystems that believe in that are the good guys. The chains and ecosystems that want to take that from you—first technologically and then through regulation—are the bad guys. It's pretty simple. If the good guys win, we live in a world where the most powerful people have to follow the same rules as the least powerful people. If the good guys win, we live in a world where every country has to play nice with each other, as opposed to the ones with nuclear weapons always winning. We live in a world of rules, where we can trust each other because we can verify that the things being told and the transactions being submitted are actually true, as opposed to relying on someone's word and hoping that person is honest.
It's a moment for us. Having been in this industry longer than most and having taken many hits, I'm still here, and I'll continue to fight the good fight. If I have to go down with the ship, I will, but it's not about me anymore. People either love me or hate me; I'm either credible or not, but there's no more influence I have to expend. It's about the next wave of people and where they come from—the next 500 million, the next billion, the everyday people, the rank and file who are trying to decide between cynicism and optimism.
At the end of the day, everything in modern society and all the algorithms that guide it are trying to push you into cynicism. They're trying to make you believe you've already lost, strip you of agency and autonomy, and make you feel that your humanity is already forfeit. Every single signal is pushing in this way. I fully understand why the young have succumbed to it. But we have to pull them out and remind them that we have the tools to reset and do something new, special, and different.
So, back here in the office, Midnight is on the horizon. Cardano has never looked better from a technological standpoint, and we have quite a movement. There are many people fired up, ready to go, and they want to win. I'm going to stay optimistic and believe that our best days are ahead of us. While we will have conflict, struggles, and adversity, we're not alone. We have each other and that unifying belief that each and every one of us is truly equal and deserves something better than what we've been given. The people we're fighting against only have fear. But guess what? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, to quote a long-dead president. I honestly believe we can win.
Thank you all for listening. It's a pleasure to be back here in the office, ready to go. There's a lot more to say and do, but that's for a different time. Cheers.
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