Charles Hoskinson is a rock star in crypto space. Many know the 34-year-old multimillionaire as the inventor of the top 10 blockchain Cardano. However, he also manages four other companies, two farms in the USA, one with 500 bison. At the WebSummit in Lisbon, BTC-ECHO met Charles Hoskinson for an interview.
BTC-ECHO: Did you ever expect your life to be the way it is now?
Charles Hoskinson: No, I was sure I would become a mathematician. But in the end it turned out: I like money more than math. So I decided to create money – and it’s great. I can do anything I’ve always wanted to do. We work with the largest crypto research groups in the world, and I can still be a couch potato.
BTC-ECHO: In the past you have labeled bitcoin maximalists as “beyond dumb”. Where does this antipathy come from?
Charles Hoskinson: First of all: I love Bitcoin. The only problem is that Bitcoin has changed. Today, for some, cryptocurrency has become something of a religion, following the doctrine of Satoshi’s white paper. Anyone deviating from this will be excommunicated. For me, this form of maximalism is an admission that something is dead.
Our biggest problem is a certain tribal mentality within the industry. Financial incentives keep us from working together. This leads to people attacking each other who should actually be cooperating.
BTC-ECHO: Do you take it easy when Dogecoin has recently overtaken Cardano or does that bother you?
Charles Hoskinson: Now it bothers me a lot less than last time. There was just too much hype back then. One should also always keep the distribution of Dogecoin in mind. It really looks like a pump and dump. In addition, Doge has had no real use so far.
However, that could change with the Twitter takeover. If Elon Musk decides to make Doge the Twitter currency, then 200 million people will use the memecoin at once. Doge would then suddenly be the most used cryptocurrency in the world.
BTC-ECHO: Thank you for the interview.
You can find the big exclusive interview in the December issue of the BTC-ECHO magazine. In it he explains, among other things, whether Cardano is now ready for mass adoption, why he is so active in Africa and what Hoskinson experienced after the war began on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
The interview was conducted by the editors Giacomo Maihofer and Daniel Hoppmann.
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