Back in Colorado

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is February 19th. Where does the time go? My Lord, 2026 back in the office, and it's been a long trip.

I went all the way through Japan. We did the whole archipelago. I was in Hokkaido, went down to Okinawa, hit up Tokyo as the final place, then flew to Hong Kong. We had a lovely time at Consensus. I got to wear a McDonald's uniform; we call it the McSpeech.

We met a lot of people and made many great announcements, including those from BlockDamon, Telegram, and Google. That's pretty cool. For the midnight launch coming next month, a lot of amazing roadmap items were achieved. We made significant progress on the midnight side, and it was great to see that network wake up. It's encouraging to see 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. Having done it a few times before, I can tell you from firsthand experience, it never is easy. I'm really excited and proud that they put in the elbow grease and are getting it done. Then, on the Cardano side, we announced the Layer 0 integration, which connects Cardano to more than 80 blockchains. This means Cardano is no longer an island; it can move liquidity, users, and value across, as well as USDCX.

A shoutout to Phil DeSauro and his team—the user experience they're building for USDCX is phenomenal. It's autoconvert, 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 1 stablecoin of that nature.

Layer 0 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 bit longer because it's significant, whereas USDCX is built for these non-EVM systems. So we're having a lot of fun with that. Laos is still on schedule. We got to travel around with Mike, the product manager, Michael Splolensky for Laos, and had many conversations about where we're at.

The Cardano Hard Fork is happening next month, but the community is working its way through that and getting these things done. All things considered, we're pretty happy with the rate of progress of Cardano, the new Plutus version, the continued development of Aiken, and the CCI integrations really pushing through. We have the Pith-a-thon at the Dev Builders Fest down in Argentina in March, so that's going to be a lot of fun to watch the integration of Pith into our ecosystem. Finally, we have a Tier 1 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's a lot of bots spreading negativity. Many people are just kind of in the dumps, and 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 principled cryptocurrency in the 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 Laos, we've solved the blockchain dilemma. There's a lot to do, many things to resolve as we power through. But the fact that Cardano can launch a midnight, a billion-plus-dollar project that has Tier 1 listings and people are genuinely excited about means that Cardano can launch Tier 1 projects listed on major exchanges and have major partnerships and relationships like Google. That is not an Ethereum thing or a Solana thing; that was done from Cardano.

It's important that people remember that and see that Cardano is still in the game, still fighting for everything. The reality is, the way the space is going, there are definitely factions whose only desire is to ban noncustodial wallets and run all cryptocurrency transactions on permissioned, federated networks owned and operated by large financial institutions. That's just what they want. They say it'll be safer, faster, and more consumer-friendly, and it won't have 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 from.

Unfortunately, they are making meaningful and sustained progress. If you look at the latest drafts of the Clarity Act and the kinds of people around it these days, you can see the launch of all these federated networks, which are VC darlings with big actors. There's 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, with many people involved in that process as stake pool operators. What's not okay is to build a network that's forever owned and operated by five, ten, or twenty banks. They would lord and leverage that power 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.

Unfortunately, the system is moving in that direction right now. There are those of us still fighting hard, and Cardano Midnight are examples of attempts to get out from underneath that. It's hard. You're not a VC darling; they don't mention you in the reports. You don't get a seat at the big boy table during negotiations.

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 get released. No one will ever be held accountable. The banks always rule us; the rich people always rule us. If that's the case, what's the point?

What's the point if everything's bad and everybody's against you? Your whole life is being puppeteered; you have no free will and autonomy. You are 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 have surrendered that which makes you human and voluntarily stepped into slavery. Be optimistic and believe that maybe the good guys can win, and you have some influence, however small, over that outcome. We're not asking for everyone to be a courageous hero charging up the mountaintop and slaying the dragon, but just the belief that somehow, someway, 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, and the fact that he got arrested means that maybe, just maybe, today can be a good day. Analogously, 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 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, and 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, have no control over, and 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 Laos 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 and still believe and keep the faith. The banks have been winning, and those who want to centralize have been winning because they stopped trying to put the people who build 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 and will fail, serving no utility or purpose in society.

This is sad. It's similar to totalitarian governments convincing people that they don't need free speech, that free speech is the enemy. They don't need democracy or 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 you that cryptocurrencies are unnecessary.

They had their time, but they were a scam, and we now need to return to the old control structures of the past. Never let them do that. Cryptocurrencies are more necessary today, here 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 in global debt. The United States is committing itself to having over $50 trillion in global debt over the next ten years. This is not a sustainable system. It never has been and 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. We 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, and bad actors do things, and scam coins are launched.

" 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 other ways." How so? Really? Palantir is aggregating all our information and creating the most dystopian total information awareness in human history to be used by authoritarians against all of us.

Are we really 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 have bad actors. But I will remind everybody, we never got a bailout.

We never got an endorsement. Neither the government nor academia or 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 us received the structures and wisdom we needed to step ahead.

When the U.S. 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.

The reality is that 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 and control 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, and be able to verify and check the transaction without having 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 second 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 the things we're being told and the transactions being submitted are actually true, as opposed to someone telling us 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 still 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.

There's no more influence that 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 make that decision 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. They're trying to strip you of agency and autonomy and make you believe 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. I'm going to 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, with a lot more to say and do.

That's for a different time.