Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is a very special day: November 10th. On this day in 1775, the Marine Corps was established, which is now 248 years old. For everyone who has served in the United States Marine Corps, including my grandfather who served from 1948 to 1952, happy birthday and congratulations. Thank you for the service you've given to the nation and continue to give. Once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine.
For those who don't know, this is a special tradition for the Marines. It's not a normal birthday; many Marines take it to heart and have a lot of fun on November 10th. It’s something that sticks with them, whether they’re in service or out of service. It’s basically the beginning of the toughest group of fighters the world has ever known, and it’s never going to be the end. It’s just an homage to that.
I wanted to make a quick video because we have so many Marines in the Cardano ecosystem to wish them all a happy birthday and to thank them for their service. I also wanted to address some concerns during this presidential transition. Things are very murky, and many discussions are happening. It’s clear that I will be involved in some capacity, influencing policy in the United States. There are options on the legislative side and potential options on the executive side, but I’m already seeing headlines suggesting that Charles Hoskinson is going to shape U.S. crypto policy. People are allowing their wildest dreams and imaginations to get ahead of them during this transition period.
The presidency has to pick over 5,000 different roles and thousands of sub-roles associated with those roles, as well as the larger roles inside the cabinet. Currently, the transition team is focused on the big-ticket items. The Chief of Staff has just been selected, along with the Secretary of State and Treasury Department, among many other things. U.S. crypto policy, while important and something the Trump Administration wants to solve, is not in the first round of considerations. So, we have to moderate expectations a bit.
It’s unclear how advisor ships will work, how many there will be, and what controls will be put in place for conflicts of interest and ethics. It’s impossible to definitively say that one person will be selected as a crypto czar versus a large committee of people in the industry and the administrative branch coming together to figure something out. It’s also very likely that the legislative branch will be doing the majority of the leading on U.S. crypto policy at the moment. There have already been two major efforts: one which was very successful, FIT 21, which passed the House with bipartisan support—61 Democrats voted on it. However, it was not sent to the Senate; they decided to wait until the next Senate session, which is now Republican-dominated with 53 Republican senators.
There are discussions about whether Senator Scott or Senator Blackburn will chair the Banking Committee in the upcoming Senate. That committee is likely to decide the legislative side of what needs to happen to unite these efforts. The FIA was the other major effort, coming from the Senate, with Senator Lummis and Senator Gillibrand’s bill. I’ve met with Senator Scott and might meet with Senator Blackburn in January. I’ve also met with Senator Wyden and other people. There is goodwill right now, including from the Senate majority leader, who will soon be a minority, Senator Schumer, to actually pass cryptocurrency legislation.
Reconciliation of these things with the administration will be interesting. There’s technically a slight conflict of interest with the administration, given that family members have launched a cryptocurrency project. There’s an open question of what the ethics will look like. As I mentioned in my prior video, we are establishing a policy office. Its sole purpose will be to connect all these dots together so that a law can work its way through. However, it’s unclear at the moment how big the goalposts will be.
Will it just be for asset classification, which is predominantly what we’ve seen in the FIA and FIT 21, when we look at whether something is a commodity or a security? Or will it be more ambitious, covering things like stablecoins, custody standards, taxation, and the government’s ability to purchase Bitcoin and hold it in reserve? Many campaign promises were made, and reconciling those will make it somewhat difficult in the legislative process to get a bipartisan bill passed. There does need to be some discussion there.
The challenge is that it’s difficult for industry leaders to directly participate based on the role and function of advisor ships. We have been in contact with members of the administration and continue to do so. We are also in contact with members of the Senate and some members of Congress. I meet with them regularly. We’re setting up a dedicated office that will focus on reconciliation. Until a Treasury Secretary is selected and it’s clear what the ethics provisions will be, it’s uncertain who will be able to serve directly at the White House level and in what capacity.
What I’ve been doing is compiling names and providing those to the transition team—people I think would be excellent advisors with a broad set of experiences in the industry across many different ecosystems. This includes individuals from the mining industry, Bitcoin veterans, exchange operators, layer one protocol developers, and those involved in the DeFi space. There’s a long list of these types of individuals based in America who have endured the industry’s ups and downs. It’s at the prerogative of the transition team to ultimately decide who they want to bring on board.
I do believe we will be involved in some way, but it’s hard to say the exact nature of that involvement. It would be misinformation to say that Charles Hoskinson is leading U.S. crypto policy. I don’t think any person, regardless of their stature, including the president, actually has that mandate. Crypto policy is reflected in current laws, the legislative branch, and the administrative arm of the U.S. government, as well as the Trump administration at the moment.
I wanted to clarify this so people’s exuberance doesn’t get too high. I appreciate what you’re feeling, and perhaps you think this will give some unfair advantage or benefit to Cardano. The reality is my goal has always been, as I spoke before Congress in 2022, to promote a universal crypto policy that’s good for everyone in the industry. That policy has to be multimodal; it has to address taxes, bank accounts, and reconcile the often difficult relationship that crypto companies have with the banking sector.
We need to discuss asset classification and when things are commodities or securities, and how to regulate DeFi in the United States. Currently, it’s a very difficult concept. We must preserve and protect rights and freedoms, including the right to develop and hold your own assets. Non-custodial wallets must always remain legal. We need to implement protections to avoid a situation where everything has to be KYC and AML.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to be an easy path forward because there are many actors involved, and it’s uncertain how this current Treasury Department will transition to the new leadership. As I mentioned before, this is not the top priority of the transition team. The top priority remains much more significant roles, such as the current wars, the $35 trillion national debt, and the border crisis. These are the top-shelf issues. The second-order roles will address these secondary concerns, which are important industries but take a back seat to the border crisis and other major issues.
I just wanted to point that out and ensure that people moderate their expectations somewhat. I will be involved; it’s just a question of how close I can be. I’m not going to resign as CEO of Input Output and divest all my crypto holdings to be completely neutral. It’s unclear how that will work with advisors.
If there’s a committee or commission, there will likely be subcommittees for each area of cryptocurrency policy. If the goal is to produce a single unified report, this would typically be instantiated through an executive order. This was done in Wyoming for the stablecoin commission, where I had a discussion with the governor about whether to be a member of the committee or create subcommittees. I chose to be a member of the subcommittee because it had different standards regarding whether we could bid on the RFP that came out.
The challenge I face is that it’s unclear when and how I’d have to recuse myself. For example, if we wanted to bid on a project for digital identity or voting systems for the United States, we know that election integrity is a significant campaign goal of the Trump administration. I don’t want my service in one area to compromise my ability to apply for an RFP to implement a system. This is unclear, but it will become clearer as the transition progresses. I suspect that clarity will not be fully there until January or February, depending on how big of an issue Trump wants to make out of this.
We continue to talk directly to Senators about cryptocurrency policy, and I believe there will be a reconciliation of FIT 21 and FIA. They need to come together, as that has the best chance of resolving the number one issue in the cryptocurrency space: the commodity-security issue that has plagued layer ones and existing exchanges. This issue has allowed Gary Gensler to irresponsibly damage the industry through regulation and enforcement.
My primary focus is getting a law passed that provides clarity. My secondary focus is figuring out how to make America the best country in the world to develop cryptocurrency projects. We need to attract cryptocurrency projects from around the world—sorry, Switzerland, Dubai, and Singapore—to relocate to the United States because it’s the best place to get it done. This is a secondary goal because it’s unlikely that one bill will cover both sides of this, and it would likely require a radical departure from how we currently regulate crypto assets.
It’s unclear how much of this can be done through executive orders and administrative actions, and how much requires lawmaking. There’s a lot to do, and as I mentioned, 2025 is a first-class citizen in our agenda. We will have a policy office that will be fully staffed probably within the next two to three months. We’ve already begun reaching out to people directly connected to various stakeholders to start putting these pieces together.
I did meet with a member of the transition team while I was in Jackson Hole, and I’ll continue the dialogue. At the moment, no one in the United States has been formally offered a role on the crypto committee or anything related. It’s premature for people to say that Charles Hoskinson is going to run U.S. crypto policy. That shouldn’t be the case; I wouldn’t want that, and it wouldn’t benefit anyone.
We will be involved in U.S. crypto policy, leveraging relationships we’ve spent the last three years constructing. Many of these discussions will be private, while some will be public. A feasibility test has to be established. The other challenge is that it’s unclear if the Republicans will control the House. There’s a high probability they will, but until it’s declared, we’re not exactly sure how the committees will operate.
Assuming the Republicans maintain control, there’s a strong possibility they can repass something like FIT 21 with modifications, and there remains bipartisan support. Another part of my role is figuring out how to make these efforts bipartisan. America works best when everyone is included, and it would make no sense to push crypto policy without inclusion from those on the political left.
As we saw with FIT 21, more than 60 Democrats voted on it. There’s a desire among younger members of the party to be reasonable and sensible about how we regulate the cryptocurrency space in the United States. That’s another thing I have to figure out, which is why we’re creating that policy office—to work with relationships on both the left and right to ensure that any legislative effort can be bipartisan.
It’s also important for people not to spike the football and seek retribution. I understand and share the anger about what’s happened over the last few years. It’s been deeply disrespectful, hard, and exceedingly expensive. No community has been hurt more than the XRP community. The SEC actions have caused them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in complex litigation just to compete on a level playing field. Coinbase is now being sued, and I feel empathy for them.
Every single person is getting drawn into this, and it’s only getting worse. There’s a feeling of wanting to use the powers of this new administration to punish those who did terrible things. However, here’s the reality: victor’s justice is not justice. We have to move on and resolve these issues to ensure they never happen again. As tempting as it is to weaponize an administration for justice, it’s not permanent. The political winds can change in 2025 or 2028, and if they do, everything we’ve achieved could be fleeting.
We cannot allow cryptocurrencies in the United States to become a partisan issue. It needs to be a bipartisan issue, and the opinion should be that crypto is good for the U.S. economy and the U.S. consumer. We need to construct a framework that allows our industry to grow and thrive. The only way to achieve this is by resetting, forgiving the past but not forgetting its lessons, and moving forward by working with everyone, not just a small group.
This is another challenge that I do not have clarity on: how these components will come together. I know it’s happening, and we are in discussions. We’ll see where they conclude. As I mentioned in my prior video, it’s early days. Please don’t go to Twitter and tell everyone that Charles is running crypto policy for the United States. That’s just not true. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, and we need to come together.
I’ve been in this industry for a very long time—more than a decade, almost a decade and a half. I’ve witnessed it grow from a small thing to something that had a significant influence in a presidential election. We should congratulate ourselves for that tremendous accomplishment and what we’ve achieved together. We should not squander that and must understand the tremendous responsibilities that now rest on industry leaders' shoulders.
We all have to grow up and get along, at least for a moment, to create fair rules and move forward. If we do this, there are $202 trillion of real-world assets waiting to enter the cryptocurrency space. There’s $100 trillion of global markets that the cryptocurrency space can expand into. Cryptocurrencies will enter mainstream consumers' everyday lives, and all Fortune 500 companies will adopt them. That is the reward for cooperation, objectivity, and fairness in the rule-making process.
Every leader in this industry must recognize that this is a rare moment for a reset. If we act with humility and unity, that reset will happen quickly, and we will be able to pass significant legislation in the next two years. If we don’t, we will squander our window. I remember firsthand how the collapse of FTX set us back by over two years. We were on track to get a law passed in 2022, and that one event caused a lot of harm to everyday people who hold and use cryptocurrencies. It turned artists into criminals and regulated exchanges into apparently unregistered businesses. No one deserves that, and we shouldn’t have to relive that past.
Let’s use 2025 responsibly. That’s all I’ll say on the matter for now. As these conversations are ongoing, I won’t comment any further. We’ll wait for the transition to unfold, and I look forward to seeing the specific ethics requirements and understanding the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the United States. It’s still unclear how those components will come together, but much more will be clear in the next 60 to 90 days. I will be traveling to Washington, D.C., regularly throughout 2025, and the sole goal of our policy office will be to ensure that laws get passed that provide clarity and fairness for our industry. Thank you all for listening. Cheers.
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