True Grit

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is March 2nd, 2025. It’s a good day, and it’s just one of many we’ve had over the last ten years. You’ve got to have some true grit to be in this industry. There are good days and bad days; we’ve been through all of them together, and I enjoy these days a lot.

I live for them. However, it’s important to widen the aperture, see the forest from the trees, and realize that we, as an industry, have a lot of work to do in the coming months. There’s going to be a great opportunity for us to work together to create pro-crypto legislation that will make America the best country in the world to found, fund, and run a cryptocurrency project. This will translate to a fundamental change in global regulation. Everything from the Middle East and all the things in between will change and become far more pro-crypto.

Effectively speaking, a window will open up for all markets—traditional finance and Web 3—to merge and create a single global economic layer that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with principles baked into it. There are a lot of standards out there, and we’re very competitive in this industry. Of course, as one of the creators of Cardano, I’m a little biased when I say we have the best solution. But the reality is there are plenty of fine people in Solana, XRP, Bitcoin, and Ethereum spaces. The world is a very big place, and it’s entirely possible for many to coexist in harmony, with trillions of dollars flowing throughout these systems.

What matters most is that these systems have integrity and principles, and they never forget where they came from. Decentralization is the heart of who we are as an industry. We must always preserve and protect it wherever we can because we have to ensure that these systems have built within them oversight, auditing, checks and balances, as well as strong guarantees that when you use them, no matter who you are, you get the same experience as the wealthy and powerful. This is the most transformative technology—not just financial technology—in our lifetimes, and it’s already started dramatically changing the financial lives of hundreds of millions of people, soon to be billions. Moving forward, we are going to see the largest companies in the world begin to adopt cryptocurrencies.

Once there is an opening of the regulatory window, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others will enter the space. You’ll see a wallet turn on in your iPhone, a cryptocurrency wallet in Facebook, and cryptocurrency capabilities in Android. The same goes for Windows, which can hold pretty much anything. This will bring three billion customers into the space. It’s going to become very easy to KYC people, and transactions and commerce will move at the speed of thought.

We are at the dawn of a new era in the cryptocurrency industry—one where we won, and we have to deal with the consequences of winning. We can never allow the rails to become compromised. We can never allow middlemen to suck all the value out, and we can never allow the systems to divorce themselves from the philosophy of why they were created in the first place. This is why I believe in Cardano so strongly, because we’ve worked really hard over the last ten years to build a system that preserves and protects the integrity of the cryptocurrency space as a whole. In the coming months, as I mentioned, legislation is coming.

Stablecoin is first, and then market structure after that. Many people will be involved in this process. I’ve always been more of a creature of the legislative branch than the executive, so I have a stronger role in that area. I’ve already begun meeting with certain key senators and starting meetings in the House. There will be more to say in the coming months about that.

The White House is pretty crowded these days with a lot of people wanting to get involved in the process on that side, and we know many of them. I think they’re doing a fine job in the balance of power. For those who don’t know our system, the legislative branch writes the laws, and the executive branch signs them. Thus, much of the innovation has to come from the Senate and the House. There are many diverse interests at the moment, and the most fundamental question that has to be asked in the legislative process is not whether a cryptocurrency is a commodity or security, but rather a recognition that if we had regulated the internet in 1991, we’d have the best email system in the world.

Just think of the concept of Amazon, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and all the other wonders that came as a result of allowing innovation to take its course. We should not be so hasty to fit a cryptocurrency into the categorization of a commodity or a security. It’s an entirely new thing. Cryptocurrencies are the stem cells of human value transfer, whether it be intellectual property, real estate, a security, or something else. A cryptocurrency, a digital asset, can represent pretty much anything.

Furthermore, they can even represent your intent—what you want to do tomorrow, what you want to buy, who you want to vote for. We’ve never seen assets as general-purpose and blendable as these because they can also be combined with your identity, thanks to the DID standard, which we pioneered in the United States with many international partners through the W3C. These great innovations mean that we have a grand regulatory challenge. The Securities Exchange Act of 1933 was published 92 years ago. I remember talking about it with Secretary Kennedy, and he said he knew a lot about that because his grandfather was the first chairman.

I said, “Wow, that’s a legacy.” The president who signed it into law was FDR. We looked at the executive branch and understand that they are coordinating an all-government approach. The law and policy that’s passed could last 90 years, just the Securities Exchange Act, and will cover many presidents and many administrations. This is why it’s vital that the legislative branch take its constitutionally mandated role in Article One and be heavily involved at every step, making sure that we build a system that’s durable and useful for the decades to come.

I do believe they’re up for this challenge. I’ve had many conversations with many people in that branch. Not only are they excited about the opportunity to create something new, but they’re also excited that this is the first time ever that our financial markets, through the cryptocurrency space, can be blended with the financial markets of the world as a whole. For those of you who don’t know how central banking works or how exchanges or securities work, the world lives in a series of walled buckets divided up by nation-states. There’s a world of difference between value transfer and activity in the UK than there is in Germany or the United States.

Being in the cryptocurrency space, we don’t differentiate things. When you send ADA, Bitcoin, or Ether to somebody, it doesn’t ask you, “Well, where’s it going, and what regulatory set is it under?” It asks you for a cryptocurrency address—that’s it. When you build a financial system like this, it’s so radically different from the way we’ve traditionally looked at financial assets and radically different from the way we’ve looked at capital formation, aggregation, and value transfer. It does require foundationally new concepts.

The fact that we could be the world leader in this is a major step forward because that translates to the next 20 trillion dollars in economic growth becoming an American industry. I want to make sure we’re part of that. This translates to millions of jobs, a 5% or greater GDP growth, and more importantly, it translates to the idea that these systems have freedom embedded within them. I think it’s very important that we have a global system that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that this system, the U.S.

Constitution, protects one’s freedom of association, commerce, and expression. These are immutable things that are god-given; they can never be forgotten and can never be discounted for the short-term convenience of politics or avarice. They must be preserved and protected. Unfortunately, no one person is able to carry that torch, regardless of their personal virtue, as we’ve seen time and again with human rights. The unique opportunity of cryptocurrency technology and the blockchain space is its ability to promote and protect the human rights of users.

Simply put, you go from “don’t be evil” to “can’t be evil.” That’s why, after 15 years, I’m still here through all the ups and downs, all the bad days, and these good ones we get occasionally. Cardano is going to be fine. We have the best roadmap, and there are a lot of amazing things coming. Yes, some people have taken advantage of us when we were down, and we’ll remind them of that when we’re up.

But now is not the time for such things. Now is the time for partnerships. It’s time to work together, be gracious, and get things done. We have to get Bitcoin DeFi going, achieve interoperability between the chains, and get Midnight out. We have to keep our eye on the prize.

We have a limited window of time as an industry to set standards that humans will have to live with for the majority of the 21st century. I believe we’re in the room, and we have an opportunity and a say. We’re going to be part of the lawmaking process where and when necessary, on the executive side and internationally speaking. Because Cardano is a global project, I’ll also remind people that we regularly engage with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the FCA in the UK, the ADGM in Abu Dhabi, VARA in Dubai, the JFSA in Japan, and dozens of other regulatory bodies. This is a global project.

While I reside in the United States and have a buffalo ranch in Wyoming with 800 buffalo running around trying to kill me, I love this country. When I die, my bones will be buried here, and I’ll always be an American. It’s not lost on me that Cardano will always be a global project because it has touched the lives of people in more than a hundred countries. There’s no greater reminder of that than when we had our constitutional convention down in Argentina. As I gave my speech, I looked out into a sea of flags—50 of them from 50 different countries—and more importantly, the faces behind the flags.

Every single one of them was carried in by somebody from those countries. That made me proud to know we were able to bring all those things together—an old, sometimes young, Hawaiian-born Wyoming rancher who’s proud to be an American was able to have the opportunity to bring people from 50 countries together and let them live out their dreams. That’s a beginning; it’s not an end. It’s just the end of the beginning, the closure of a chapter. The book is not finished; we’re still writing it.

We have a long road ahead, a lot more to do, a lot of technology, and a lot of policy. We’re in it to win it, and I think we will. That gives me so much pride because it means that maybe, just maybe, we’ll get out of this funk, and tomorrow is going to be better than yesterday. I’d like to live in a world of hope and optimism again, where people care for each other and want to work with each other. That’s ultimately what this is about.

It’s not about money; it’s not about the winds of the days or the behavior of the markets. It’s simply about a world where technology brings us together instead of driving us apart, and where technology helps us live out our dreams instead of destroying them. Thank you all for sharing this good day with us. I’m proud of your true grit too. We earn this by the fact that we showed up on the bad days, and there will be more to come, I can promise you that.

But at the end of the day, we will get there. We will win. Thanks, everyone. Cheers!