Key Takeaways
- Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is facing fresh accusations over the handling of ADA funds.
- NFT artist Masato Alexander claims Hoskinson moved $225 million worth of ADA after the 2021 hard fork.
- Hoskinson has denied the allegations and threatened legal action.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is once again at the center of controversy, this time accused of manipulating ADA reserves following the blockchain’s 2021 hard fork.
The accusations surfaced on social media this week and have been forcefully denied by Hoskinson, who dismissed them as false and threatened legal action against those spreading them.
Hoskinson Threatens Legal Action
The claims, made on May 7 by NFT artist Masato Alexander, allege Hoskinson used his control over Cardano’s genesis keys to erase original UTxOs from the 2017 ICO and move 318 million ADA, worth roughly $225 million, into Cardano’s reserves.
Alexander claims the move happened during the network’s Allegra hard fork and went largely unnoticed by the community.
Hoskinson has forcefully denied the allegations, calling them “slander and libel,” and threatening legal action against those spreading what he described as falsehoods.
“If you continue to imply that IO stole funds, I will sue you. This is my last warning,” he wrote in one of several posts on X.
ADA Vouchers and the TGE Entity
At the heart of the dispute is Cardano’s Token Generation Event (TGE), which handled the network’s 2017 crowdsale.
According to Hoskinson, 99.8% of all ADA vouchers issued to investors were successfully redeemed.
The remaining 0.2%, representing about 18 to 24 million ADA, were unclaimed after a seven-year redemption window.
Those tokens, he said, were returned to the TGE and donated to Intersect, a governance group within Cardano, following the same process used to fund the Cardano Foundation.
Hoskinson emphasized that he had no direct control over the unclaimed tokens, and said the redemption process was prolonged by the bankruptcy of Attain, the company that originally sold ADA vouchers in Japan, and the Cardano Foundation’s earlier refusal to take over the redemption effort.
He also revealed that the final voucher holder is now completing their claim, signaling the end of the redemption period.
To back up his claims, Hoskinson said an “externally audited report” detailing the full history of the crowdsale and redemption process would soon be published and shared with founding Cardano entities, including IOG, the Cardano Foundation, Emurgo and Intersect.
A Community Divided
The allegations have sparked a wave of reactions across the Cardano community.
Some users, including prominent figures like Jonathan Morgan published threads debunking Alexander’s claims, arguing that no ledger rewrite occurred, and that the transition of unclaimed ADA was part of a scheduled protocol update.
Others defended Alexander’s right to raise questions, framing it as a matter of accountability and transparency in decentralized governance.
“This is nothing more than investigative research,” one user wrote, pushing back against what they saw as an overreaction by Hoskinson.
Hoskinson, for his part, didn’t hold back.
In a series of follow-up posts, he confirmed that he had issued a cease and desist letter to Alexander and would seek names in legal discovery.
The Cardano founder reiterated that the funds were never stolen and insisted that every step had followed protocol rules.
Prashant Jha is a seasoned crypto journalist based in Delhi, India, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering. Passionate about the evolving world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, he has been a dedicated voice in the industry since 2018. Prashant’s expertise lies in regulatory reporting, where he unravels complex legal and financial developments with clarity and precision. Before joining CCN in 2024, he honed his craft at Cointelegraph, establishing himself as a trusted name in crypto journalism.
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