Crypto Kerfuffle! 😲 Hoskinson’s Hurt?

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Right then, it appears the chaps at the Cardano Foundation are in a bit of a pickle. Seems some rather unsavory accusations have surfaced, suggesting a jolly good sum of roughly $600 million worth of ADA tokens has gone missing. Dash it all! 🧐

The esteemed Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and a chap who presumably knows his onions, is facing a spot of renewed scrutiny. One Masato Alexander, a non-fungible token artist (good heavens!), alleges that Hoskinson, in a move that sounds suspiciously like something out of a penny dreadful, manipulated the Cardano ledger. Apparently, he used a “genesis key” (sounds terribly important, doesn’t it?) to rewrite it and seize control of $619 million worth of Cardano (ADA) during the network’s 2021 Allegra hard fork. I say, the cheek of it! 😠

And as if that weren’t enough, a secondary transaction, labeled with the rather verbose title of “Move Instantneous Rewards” and dated Oct. 24, 2021, reveals a transfer of over 318 million ADA tokens. This, it seems, allowed the funds to merrily skip from reserve pools into staking or treasury allocations. Oh, the tangled webs we weave! 🕸️

However, Hoskinson retorts with a touch of asperity that ADA redemptions remained open for a full three years after the transaction. He further clarified that “the vast majority of that 350 million ADA was redeemed by the original buyers,” a process that apparently took a leisurely seven years to complete. One does wonder what they were doing with their time! 🕰️

“IOG never gave itself 350 million unclaimed ADA. This is a lie,” Hoskinson declared in a May 6 post on that modern contraption, X. “The vast majority was claimed, and the remaining that was forfeited after seven years of waiting was donated to Intersect.” A charitable gesture, no doubt, though one suspects it won’t silence the doubters. 🤔

Hoskinson “deeply hurt” by community reaction

Hoskinson, it seems, is rather put out by the whole affair. He confirmed that an audit report related to the hard fork is in progress, but added that he is “deeply hurt” by the community’s apparent lack of trust. The poor chap! 😢

“To not be given the benefit of the doubt here without strong evidence to the contrary means I don’t have the connection I thought with some people,” Hoskinson lamented in a May 18 X post. He then added, with a hint of resignation:

“After the audit report comes out, I’m going to likely turn my X account over to a media team and change the format of my AMAs and X spaces.”

One can only imagine the sort of chaos that will ensue when a media team gets their mitts on his X account. It hardly bears thinking about! 🤯

Hoskinson, who was also one of the co-founders of Ethereum, is, of course, one of the leading figures in blockchain development. Quite the brainy fellow, one must admit. 🤓

Speaking at Paris Blockchain Week 2025, Hoskinson emphasized the need for collaborative economics in the crypto industry. This, he argued, is essential to counter the growing competition from those traditional tech firms who are now barging into the blockchain space, thanks to the growing regulatory clarity. The nerve of them! 😠

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2025-05-19 16:26