Cardano’s Hoskinson Questions Bitcoin Maximalist Hypocrisy: Satoshi Held 100% Hash Power

• Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has posted another video this week.
• This latest follows on from an AMA uploaded a few days previously.
• In the video, he had a few choice words for Bitcoin maximalists.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson ruffled feathers in a video post this week, offering blunt opinions on Bitcoin’s origins and chastising the divisiveness he currently sees in the crypto industry. 

Speaking from Abu Dhabi on November 30th, Hoskinson dove into Bitcoin’s early days, when creator Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first bitcoins. The video was a follow-up to his latest AMA, in which he criticized the SEC’s preferential treatment of Bitcoin.

Hoskinson: Satoshi Had Complete Control Over Bitcoin

“On day one, Satoshi had 100% of the hash power and complete and absolute control of the Bitcoin network. There was no notion of a fair launch,” Hoskinson said. He likely mined a “non-trivial amount” of the supply in a completely centralized way. Yet Bitcoin fans now criticize other projects’ beginnings despite Bitcoin’s own opaque early history, Hoskinson argued.

Hoskinson also speculated that Nakamoto could have made side financial deals during Bitcoin’s launch. “What if Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to take two years off from work and made a side deal with one of his friends?” Hoskinson asked. In theory, Nakamoto could have offered mining proceeds to a friend funding his time off, not unlike the private sales or “ICOs” (initial coin offerings) that draw criticism in crypto’s “altcoin” space today.

“Yes, that’s kind of a ICO. Isn’t this kind of a pre-sale?” Hoskinson said, underscoring what he sees as inconsistencies and hypocrisy. He lamented maximalists who call other crypto assets “scams” despite Bitcoin’s own unconventional start.

The Cardano creator reserved special frustration for the maximalist camp’s lobbying to outlaw competitors and undermine open blockchain innovation happening outside of Bitcoin. “I know for a fact, I’ve spoken with staff of lawmakers, who that same day spoke to members of the Bitcoin community, prominent influencers, who literally just had a meeting where they were told everything but Bitcoin should be made illegal in the United States,” Hoskinson revealed.

Bitcoin Isn’t The Only Game In Town

He went on to discuss the unique capabilities of other crypto projects besides Bitcoin: “The Bitcoin core protocol does not have smart contracts that are capable of doing the things that Cardano on Ethereum can do. There are no DEXs, there are no Oracles, there are no algorithmic stablecoins, there are no on-chain DAOs, there is no on-chain infrastructure.”

Hoskinson suggested Satoshi himself would have embraced innovations like smart contracts if available when launching Bitcoin. The reality is crypto projects have more similarities than differences in working to return economic power to individuals, Hoskinson said, yet the maximalists continue attacking competition.

The divide and acrimony plays right into the hands of authorities who feel threatened by that ethos, he warned: “They understand that if the world gets back control of its money, of its voting of its identity and data, that it’s going to be really hard to put a global regime over humanity, and have a small group of people run the whole show.”

Hoskinson called for maturity and responsibility to overcome tribalist infighting. “Being your own bank, owning your own identity, having control of your own voice…These things require integrity, they require accountability. They require some investment of time,” he counseled.

We Are On The Way To A Social Credit System, Says Hoskinson

Such attacks on open source crypto progress motivate an “us vs. them” tribalism that only serves the interests of centralized authorities looking to control blockchain technology, Hoskinson argued. Crypto projects have far more similarities than differences, he said, making calls for unity reasonable. Yet the maximalist camp continues fanning the flames of division.

“It’s got to stop. It really has to,” an exasperated Hoskinson urged. In the final stretch of his video, Hoskinson railed against government forces corroding freedoms. With targeted policies and institutional absorption threatening the still-fledgling crypto industry, Hoskinson warned that “we just got to grow up.” 

“We are so close to CBDCs, we are so close to AI being integrated with CBDCs and social credit becoming a universal concern… we have whole nation states like China pursuing it and giving us paint by numbers reality for that.”