Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from Tokyo. You know, I’ve got to get a catchphrase for each of these places. I’m going to use AI and just kind of invent it. It’s always warm and sunny here in Tokyo. Even in the wintertime, you get some warmth about it. It’s a beautiful day outside. I woke up and said, "Hey, we have a lot to do. We're on our third cohort of ambassadors. We've been on tour all throughout Japan."
And you know what we said? The cavalry is coming. We saw a lot of investors, a lot of developers, and a lot of well-wishers—people who have been around the Cardano ecosystem for more than 10 years. They come up and say, "Oh, we thought Cardano was fading and dead, and we're glad to see you. Give us some hope. Give us some news." We said, "Let's talk about Laos. Let's talk about Hydra. Let's talk about all the wonderful things coming. More importantly, let's talk about the fact that we're ready for commercialization. The infrastructure is strong. We're fully decentralized. Governance has been done. So now it's time to build some fun, exciting, real use cases and get them into the ecosystem."
When you see things like Starream and Midnight, that’s the vanguard of all of it. Markets are tough right now. It’s red, red, red—almost like The Shining red. People are not feeling good. But you have two choices: you can either turtle up and say, "Hey, it’s over. Everything's coming to an end. It’s all collapsing. It was all a scam. Everything we tried didn’t mean anything." Or you can say, "This is just one of many challenges on a difficult road to freedom. Why would it be easy? Why would any of this involve a straight path? We're literally restructuring and rebuilding the entire world financial system and everything that goes along with that. Do you think it’s an honest system? Do you think it’s a fraud-free system? Do you think it’s not a corrupt system? It’s a reflection of humanity—warts and all. You have good sides and bad sides. And nothing is stable right now. Not our president in the United States, not the US dollar, not any foreign policy, not the markets of any asset, whether it be gold or silver, not real estate, because we’re going through a transition as a society.
Globalism has finally reached its peak, accelerated by AI and demographic changes, and the human race is starting to think in terms of "we" instead of nation by nation. You have customers in every country. You have movements in every country. You speak every language. It’s a different way of doing things. The old guard and the old way of doing things are fading, and they’re kicking and screaming as they’re being dragged off the stage. A new way of doing things is coming. The only way to run a world like this is through cryptocurrency, full stop. Otherwise, you have to build an empire, and no one is strong enough to conquer the world right now—not even China.
So, that’s the only option. If we’re going to globalize, we need to be one market, one group of people trading with each other. We need an economic franca. And you tell me how we’re going to do that without a blockchain. I’ve thought about it for over 15 years, and you know what? I’ve reached the conclusion there’s no other way. So there’s an inevitability of victory; we just have to earn it.
The next few weeks and months are going to be hard for everybody. There are going to be more red days. You have every right to lose faith and go home. All I ask is that you ask yourself: what are you going home to? A rigged system that robs you of 5 to 10% of your wealth and will lay you off when AI takes over? What’s the point? We’re at the endgame, people. Humanity’s done with the way things are going.
The most revealing part of the Epstein files wasn’t that Jeffrey Epstein was running around sleeping with children every day. The most revealing part is the social acceptance of it, despite the fact that we have emails, recordings, and other evidence of some of the most powerful people in the world bragging about doing horrific things to children. And there are no investigations. Everybody expects that to be the default state. Deep down inside, we all know this can’t last. Humanity has moved on. We don’t want to accept that a dark group of people who worship Bronze Age pagan gods and murder children should have the right to lead us forever and control us with money.
There’s got to be something better. So, I’m optimistic. I don’t care if the road is hard. I really don’t. I don’t care where it leads, and I don’t care if we fail or succeed. It’s not about that. It’s about me personally saying, "I don’t consent to what’s going on. I don’t consent to the system that we have. It’s evil. It’s irredeemably evil. And every group of people that tries to work with that system becomes evil, whether they like it or not. There’s no compromise with the devil. You can’t dance with them in the moonlight and expect not to come out the other side the same person."
We have something that isn’t. Yes, it’s had its problems, its warts, and memecoin mania. Why would you expect any different? We’re kids. We don’t know any better. We’re new at this. We don’t have 400 years of legacy to lean on to do things exactly the right way. And yet, you exclude all the brilliance, all the amazing advancements today. These systems can process billions of transactions every month. Right now, these systems are far more advanced for your identity, your data, and your self-sovereignty than anything that has ever been built in the legacy world. It’s not a hypothetical. It’s not an aspiration. It’s a reality.
Pieces of the puzzle are everywhere with Solana, SU, Cardano, and Midnight. All we have to do is put them together and make them easy to use. Is that so hard? Are we so bereft of common sense and ability that someone’s not going to figure out how to package it in a way that’s mainstream? It’s a ticking time bomb. Someone’s going to do it. I’m fighting for it. Vitalik is fighting for it. Anatoli is fighting for it. We’re going to figure it out. And whoever does, the floodgates will open, and we win.
In the meantime, we have to endure the red. But we do so knowing we’re walking a road that doesn’t lead to an evil place. It’s just that simple. The best things in life don’t have to be complicated. They don’t have to be dark like a Snyderverse Batman versus Superman or Game of Thrones season 8, where they have five sunglasses on when they’re fighting the Night King. It’s so dark and gritty.
Oh yeah, it depends. It’s nuanced. Every now and then, there are just good people. And every now and then, there are people who want to do a good job. What they do to control you is put a little cynical time bomb in your brain that ticks and ticks. Every time you hear something like this, you say, "Yes, but it’s easy for you to say, Charles. You’re rich. You can ride it out." I’ve lost more money than anyone listening to this—over $3 billion now. It would have been real easy to cash out and just walk away.
Do you think I honestly care if I lose it all? You’re mistaken if you do. There’s a reason I’m not in the Epstein files. There’s a reason I didn’t get rolled up in FTX. There’s a reason why, when all these scandals seem to happen, my name doesn’t come up. And no, it’s not because no one likes me. It’s because my default answer is no. I don’t care if you lose money. I don’t care if it means I get put at the kids' table and don’t get to go to the White House or any of these other things. Why would I want to go? What are those people offering? It’s a poison chalice.
You say I’m too principled. What else do I have? What else do any of us have at the end of the day? All you have is your integrity. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “You know, today I did the right thing. Today I wasn’t an evil person or a bad person. Today I fought for something that was right.” That’s all we have.
So, every line of code we write, every ambassador that joins, every step forward on that difficult road—that’s progress. Some days are easier than others. I don’t care. I’m here for life. This is who I am. It’s always going to be who I am. As long as I’m alive, I’m going to keep going. I don’t care if it’s with a 100-person team or a five-person team. I don’t care if I have to write the code myself and it’s just me on a laptop jamming out to good music, or if it’s a thousand people. I was alone when I began this, and I can be alone when I finish this. This is who I am.
So, don’t let the turkeys get you down. Don’t let the markets get you down. It’ll get worse. It’ll get redder. It is what it is. But at the end of the day, are you having fun? Find a way to. Know that each and every one of you in the cryptocurrency space is doing something that matters. You’re doing something that has the potential to change the world. And you’re doing something that, when we reset and get rid of all these dark, evil people, the people that replace them will go from “don’t be evil” to “can’t be evil.” The system will keep us in check.
It’s the only way to do it. You can’t trust people anymore. We need rules. We need regulating functions. We need something outside of ourselves to actually regulate ourselves so that we don’t succumb to the demons of our nature. That’s crypto. We’re always going to be the punk rock, the cypherpunk, the rebels.
So, join me on the long road. Become a Midnight ambassador. Join Intersect with Cardano or pick your favorite cryptocurrency. If they actually believe in these things, work there too. I like Anatoli; he’s a good man. There are a lot of people I like in this industry. It’s not about tokens, and it’s not about your favorite team. It’s just about believing that you’re actually making a difference and finding a path to do that.
Let’s all do it together. So, on a red day, thank you very much. I’m here with you. I’ll be with you on the green days too, and I’ll be with you on the red days. I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this together. Good night, everyone.
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