Allegations that Charles Hoskinson misappropriated over 300 million ADA are at the center of a row in the Cardano community.
The founder of top-10 cryptocurrency Cardano (ADA), Charles Hoskinson, said in a recent X post that he is “deeply hurt” by allegations that he misappropriated more than 300 million ADA tokens. Hoskinson also revealed that the Cardano Foundation is undergoing an audit to prove that the allegations are false.
The allegations surfaced earlier this month when NFT artist Masato Alexander accused Hoskinson, who is also an Ethereum co-founder, of misappropriating 318 million ADA tokens in 2021, when they were worth about $619 million. They are now worth about $234 million.
Writing on X on May 18, Hoskinson said:
“It’s not possible for anyone to not take this personally. For a decade, I’ve been on the front lines. 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.”
He added that he will probably be less accessible and turn his personal X account over to “a media team” once the audit is out. He also said that he would change the format of his AMAs and X Spaces, though without specifying how.
According to Alexander, the funds, from Cardano initial coin offering (ICO) owners who hadn’t moved them for four years, were seized during Cardano’s Allegra hard fork. He alleges that Hoskinson altered Cardano’s ledger “via genesis keys.”
In the same X thread from May 7, Alexander refuted Hoskinson’s claim from a day earlier that the “vast majority” of the ADA reserves in question were eventually claimed by ICO buyers, calling the incident “one of the greatest unknown heists in crypto history.”
Hoskinson then accused Alexander of “lying to people,” saying that the ADA in question was moved into a custodial account and that attempts to connect with the owners continued for three more years. Unclaimed funds were forfeited and turned over to Intersect, a Cardano governance organization.
“If you continue to imply that IO stole funds, I will sue you,” Hoskinson continued, evidently referring to Cardano development firm Input Output Global (IOG), formerly known as Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK). “This is my last warning.”
At $0.74 ADA is up almost 14% since May 6, but lost 10% in the past week, according to The Defiant’s price tracker. It reached $0.85 on May 12 before retreating.
#Cardano #Founder #Deeply #Hurt #Theft #Claims #Announces #Audit
