Cardano Founder Denies $619 Million ICO Misconduct
Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano and chief executive of engineering company Input Output Global (IOG), has rejected allegations that he improperly appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ADA from the blockchain’s 2015–2017 token-generation event (TGE). Writing on X on Wednesday, Hoskinson insisted that “IOG never gave itself 350 million unclaimed ada. This is a lie,” adding that “the vast majority was claimed and the remaining that was forfeited after seven years of waiting was donated to Intersect.”
Cardano Founder Rejects Claims Of Fraud
The dispute flared after X user Masato Alexander resurfaced an October 2021 on-chain transaction in which Hoskinson, using a movement of 350 million ADA via a Monetary Incentives Recalculation (MIR) withdrawal, allegedly “rewrote the Cardano ledger and took control of ₳318 m ($619 m).” Alexander claims that the operation amounted to “one of the largest ledger reorgs in blockchain history,” outstripping even Ethereum’s 2016 DAO fork. He questioned how the 350 million ADA “from vouchers” could have been reduced to “$7 m USD” that would ultimately fund Intersect, a Cardano-affiliated member organization.
Hoskinson responded that the numbers had been misread. “Because you cannot read,” he told Alexander, “the vast majority of that 350 million ada was redeemed by the original buyers. It took seven years.” In a detailed post he explained that the TGE’s smart-contract design required a full seven-year waiting period before unclaimed vouchers could be recalled. He also pointed to the collapse of Attain, the original third-party voucher vendor, and to the Cardano Foundation’s decision in 2017 not to assume the voucher redemption work, as the primary reasons “many people at IOG have spent years of their lives, thanklessly, on this program.”
The Cardano founder said the TGE entity is now “in the last stages of the redemption process since the final buyer is nearly through with his claim.” Once the final claim is processed, Hoskinson wrote, “the final act of the TGE will be to issue an externally audited report on the entire crowdsale and the redemption history to the founding entities and Intersect. It will then begin the process of shutting down.” That report, he added, will form the basis for any legal action IOG may pursue against commentators who continue to allege misconduct: “Should they continue to assert that IOG stole funds, we will pursue legal action.”
Hoskinson emphasized that “99.8 percent of all Ada Vouchers sold were redeemed by their original buyers. After seven years, the remaining 0.2 percent were returned to the TGE and donated to Intersect through the same process that funded the Cardano Foundation.” He underscored that “no report on this has been published because the redemption process has been ongoing since the protocol launched in 2017.”
Hoskinson further threatened the possibility of litigation. “As we are now considering litigation against those slandering us, we will make no further statements until the closing report is published. We will then send letters to the relevant parties demanding retractions and apologies.”
At press time, ADA traded at $0.70.
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