Cardano Founder: I Lost $3 Billion! But I Won't Give Up Investing in Cryptocurrency

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson claims his paper assets have evaporated by $3 billion, but the IOHK team had already acquired over 2.4 billion ADA during the 2017 ICO, maintaining operations through token reserves and staking rewards.
(Background: The biggest panic in Bitcoin history! Single-day “realized net loss” reaches $3.2 billion, surpassing FTX, LUNA, 519, 312 records)
(Additional context: MicroStrategy invests an additional $75.3 million to buy 855 more BTC! Holding 713,000 BTC near breakeven, can Strategy keep buying?)

Cryptocurrency prices recently plummeted, leaving investors speechless. According to foreign media reports, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson publicly stated during a live stream that his paper assets have evaporated by $3 billion. But he won’t give up on crypto investments.

This sensational figure has sparked much discussion in the community, but in reality, it’s a paper loss calculated from ADA’s all-time high (unrealized loss), not an actual cash loss.

According to Forbes data, Charles Hoskinson’s estimated net worth in 2022 was between $500 million and $600 million. So where did this money come from? How did the Cardano team build this invisible vault?

IOHK’s Money Printing Mechanism

To understand the funding sources of the Cardano ecosystem, we need to go back to 2017. At that time, Cardano conducted an ICO, issuing a total of 45 billion ADA, with 25.9 billion released during the fundraising phase, successfully raising about $79.2 million. But the real key lies in the token distribution mechanism.

Based on tokenomics analysis, 20% of the initial supply—about 5.18 billion ADA—was directly allocated to three core entities: IOHK (now renamed IOG), responsible for technical development; Emurgo, responsible for commercial promotion; and the Cardano Foundation, overseeing regulatory coordination. Among them, Charles Hoskinson’s IOHK took the largest share, about 2.46 billion ADA.

At the current ADA price of approximately $0.26, just the original token reserves held by IOHK are worth over $600 million on paper. This doesn’t include staking rewards generated over the years through the PoS (Proof of Stake) mechanism.

Simply put, IOHK’s operational costs were already zero in 2017. Since then, every ADA sold has been pure profit. That’s why they can afford to employ hundreds of engineers to write academic papers, conduct peer reviews, and operate without needing external VC (venture capital) funding.

The Cost of $3 Billion

Charles Hoskinson emphasizes that this $3 billion paper loss is the price he pays for rejecting “toxic capital.” He explicitly states he won’t play leverage games like SBF at FTX, nor engage in problematic networks like Epstein’s.

This sounds like a distancing statement, but from another perspective, it’s also about drawing a clear line. Against the backdrop of FTX’s collapse and multiple projects being linked to suspicious funds, Hoskinson’s remarks send a signal to the market: Cardano’s funding sources are clean, not tainted by Wall Street or Silicon Valley speculative capital.