When is ADA going “to the moon”?

Charles Hoskinson is one of the most influential people in the crypto scene. Many know the 35-year-old multimillionaire as the inventor of Cardano, one of the most successful blockchain projects in the industry. In an interview with BTC-ECHO editors Giacomo Maihofer and Daniel Hoppmann, he explains how he deals with his success, why he describes Bitcoin maximalists as “beyond stupid” and when ADA will go to the moon.

Disclaimer: The interview first appeared in the December issue of BTC-ECHO magazine.

BTC-ECHO: You own a farm in Wyoming. how much time do you spend there

Charles Hoskinson: I own two properties. A 50-acre farm in Colorado. I grow hay there. My ranch with 500 bison is in Wyoming. They’re running around trying to kill me. I’m in Colorado during the weekdays because my office is nearby. I go to the ranch on the weekends.

What is your everyday life like?

When I’m in one place, I get up at five, exercise, feel good, meditate every morning. But I travel up to 250 days a year. You can’t stick to a routine like that. I’m flying my private jet. I work there too.

It’s like this every day. I’m still relatively young at 35 and I can keep it up. But I think when I’m 40 or 50 years old I’ll have to reduce the intensity.

Did you ever expect your life to be what it is today?

No, I was sure I would become a mathematician. Ultimately it turned out I like money more than math. So I decided to create money – and it’s awesome. 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.

My success as a businessman surprises even me. I saw myself as the boss of a small start-up. Now I run a company with over 700 employees and four other companies, for example in the field of biomedicine. I always say: I have two doses of brains, but only half a dose of personality. I had to learn a lot of leadership skills, most notably: how to really listen. That was difficult.

What do you love more: nature or blockchain?

Oh, nature – by far. I have a very personal relationship with her. Nature is a good mirror of reality. When you grow hay, you can’t lie. Either it turned out well or it didn’t. It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire or a big guy with a great reputation. Nature removes your ego.

In fact, I also see a connection to blockchain: with these protocols, we’re basically trying to replicate an artificial version of nature. If you like: a social form of physics. It’s about how we deal with trust in the 21st century.

In what way?

The blockchain gives us a neutral ground, like nature. A bulletin board where all things are verifiable. Everyone gets the same data and the same access. A nation state like Germany. But also a farmer in Senegal. Your power or reputation doesn’t count. We can take these logs and use them for social things. Changing it: how our money works or our elections.

However, the reality of many blockchain systems looks different. Power structures do exist. In decentralized organizations (DAOs) for example, a kind of crypto-democracy. The people with the most tokens have the most voting power.

We are aware of this power. We see and feel them. That means we can create a better system. In most structures, however, the distribution of power is hidden. You have the president and behind him this whole huge bureaucracy. You don’t know who really makes the decision – and how.

Governments and their bureaucracies also take decades to change, if not centuries. The crypto industry reinvents itself every five years. You always get a different social structure. We can build a new version of a DAO that is more egalitarian. We have transparency. We see the problem and quantify it. It’s the first step to improvement. That gives me hope.

Do you feel like the influx of VCs and big institutional players like BlackRock is making crypto more and more about the money?

VCs are just mercenaries. I’m not too worried about her. It was always about money. That’s why people come to the space. But they stay – because of the philosophy. They lose themselves in something bigger than accumulating wealth. The concept of money itself is at stake here. What does it mean to be a millionaire? Let the BlackRocks and VCs come. If the protocols are pure, then they cannot change the core of the system. They can do their thing around the edges. They will try to regulate it. But protocol will resist. This is the great challenge of our time: the next growth leap and milestone. If we overcome that, we can change the world.

And what if the technology is not pure?

Then you know through the transparency that they have infiltrated us. This is the magic of blockchain. We just build a new system.

In the past, you’ve called Bitcoin maximalists “beyond stupid.” Where does your antipathy come from?

i love bitcoin The problem is: Bitcoin has changed. Not me. I invested before it was even worth a dollar. We had no money. The conferences were tiny. There was a counter. Our barista was Starbucks. We had to pay for everything. And about twelve people came. And we thought: This is so cool! i talk to other people Wow, we’re going to change the future! In those early days, Bitcoin was a gathering place for really great people like Roger Ver. He was great. He went to the hairdresser, cafe and restaurant, bought something and said: I’m not leaving this store until you accept bitcoin. These people made cryptocurrency great.

Today, Bitcoin has become a kind of religion for many, following the doctrine of Satoshi’s white paper. Anyone deviating from this will be excommunicated. And I say, folks, we’re learning, we’re growing. It’s been thirteen years. We have great new inventions.

Do you think maximalism, in any form, is harmful?

For me, maximalism is an admission that something is dead. Our biggest problem is a certain tribal mentality within the industry. Everyone has their own tokens and want to increase their utility. So financial incentives keep us from working together. This leads to people attacking each other who should actually be cooperating.

When is Cardano going to the moon?

The price is meaningless to me. Who cares? What matters is where we are in five, ten and fifteen years. Can we look back and say the technologies we built created something that never existed before?

In 2023 we will bring microtransactions to Cardano. I spoke about this for the first time in 2014, during my first TED Talk. I said: We will use this to enable people in Kenya to get loans on the blockchain. And eight years later, we’re in a position to do that. That was no coincidence. I went to Africa, we formed relationships, invested in companies, built companies, created stablecoins. All to get to this point.

If we use it to change someone’s life, we have kept our promise. Nothing else matters. And it’s an infinite ladder. You get up in the morning and say to yourself: Today I’m going to take the next step. And if it’s useful to people, it will grow. All by herself.

Thank you for the interview.