Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is a very exciting day. It is a milestone, a major accomplishment for the Cardano ecosystem as a whole, and I just want to share it with all of you.
As you know, when we launched Midnight, the Night token was listed on Binance Alpha, and there were a lot of open conversations about when Midnight would come to Binance Spot, the big exchange. Binance just tweeted today that they are excited to announce the Midnight holder airdrop. BNB holders, get ready! The airdrop page will be available on the Binance airdrop, and they are getting their distribution. Plus, the token is going to be listed on Binance soon. So, Midnight is coming to Binance Spot as the first Cardano native asset to be listed there. How about that?
It's a major milestone for the ecosystem. It has opened the door for all other Cardano native assets. This was a very high bar; it's the largest market in the world. You may have noticed recently that CZ is now richer than Bill Gates, which is a big inflection point and a change in the guards of the industry. There's a reason for that—80% of all altcoin trading is done on Binance. It's the market of markets, the granddaddy of them all, with half a billion customers.
Midnight has always been a very large part of the chain abstraction, the account abstraction story. It's one of the pillars of Midnight, that triangle of abstraction. One of the exciting things is that when you look at where this is going, centralized exchanges (CEXs) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are all kind of coming together. Traditional finance and DeFi are merging, and Binance has always been at the forefront of that with BNB and what they've done with the Binance infrastructure.
When Midnight comes to this infrastructure, we can do things that reimagine the art of the possible with compliance, moving into the smart compliance world, which will open up $10 trillion of real-world assets. This is above and beyond just making exchanges safer and more efficient, especially for things like travel rule compliance and provability without revealing the underlying information. So, zero-knowledge (ZK) technology is going to be a big part of the story for all modern exchanges. But the first step is you have to be where the action is.
We're extremely excited that Binance announced today that Midnight is coming to Spot. It's a big deal for everybody in the ecosystem. That barrier has been broken now. It's kind of like when Coinbase listed ADA back in 2021; that was a big deal for us as an ecosystem. Or Circle most recently with USDCX getting it done.
I'm so proud of everybody at the Midnight Foundation and everyone in the broader Cardano ecosystem. This was a heavy lift, and a lot had to happen. Some people wrote off Cardano, saying it couldn't launch a billion-dollar project, couldn't get tier-one liquidity, and that Cardano's days in the DeFi space were over. They said it wasn't relevant anymore. For us to be able to show that they're all wrong is significant. You don't get too many days like this, and when they come, I enjoy them.
I’d like to thank everybody at the Midnight Foundation, from Fammi Sohyed on down. I’d like to thank everyone at Shielded, from Mike Ward on down. I’d also like to thank the Binance organization; they've been phenomenal to work with. My friend CZ has built a great organization with great leadership. I’d like to thank my friend Gabriel Beddall, chairman of Binance. We've been friends for a decade and a half. We're both the crypto island boys—he's in Barbados, I was in Hawaii.
I’d also like to thank all the rank-and-file staff at Binance, as well as the BNB team. There are a lot of moving pieces to all things like this, and it's always nice when everything comes together. It's a great ecosystem with a great culture and a lot of great people. There are certainly ups and downs, but this is one of those ups.
To the young Midnight ecosystem and community, to the Night Force and all the ambassadors, and to everyone in the Midnight Discord, we are excited. We are going to create some things in Midnight City to really showcase the power and magic of BNB. Midnight City, as you know, is an agentic civilization. Very soon, you'll be able to get your own agents. You buy them with Night, and you embed them in. Every month, you have to top it up. It's kind of like having a Tamagotchi. This will create a lot of demand, but more importantly, you get to participate in an agentic civilization.
We're really excited to see that happen. When a big event like this occurs, Midnight City has to celebrate it, and we'll build something in it. We'll make sure that gets listed in the roadmap as well.
Anyway, I'm just rambling a bit now because I'm just happy. It's a good day. Thanks, everybody. It's an exciting day, and congratulations to Cardano. The Cardano native assets are now listed on Binance. How about that?
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