$600 Million Cardano Smear Was ETH-Backed Stunt: Hoskinson

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure The public conflict between Charles Hoskinson and non-fungible-token artist Masato Alexander who alleged that the Cardano founder quietly redirected 318 million ADA—worth roughly $619 million at the time—from legacy presale wallets into Cardano’s reserves during the 2021 Allegra hard fork, is further escalating. The Cardano founder has fired back with a string of messages on X that recast the affair as a calculated publicity grab for an Ethereum-based venture.

“So the defamation was just about increasing his visibility to fund-raise for an Ethereum project??? You seriously can’t make this shit up,” Hoskinson wrote late Wednesday via X, attaching a screenshot of a private chat in which Alexander said he was “trying to lock in some funding for Akua and get some runway.”

The screenshot triggered an immediate rebuttal from Alexander—“do you really wanna be sharing DMs charles? put these on the pile”—and opened a window onto a second, previously unseen exchange. In that conversation Phil Harman, chief executive of Anastasia Labs and a long-time Cardano developer, asked Alexander whether a Cardano version of Akua might be possible. Harman later bristled at having the discussion made public: “What is the purpose of releasing these DMs of me trying to give you constructive advice about your dApp? … Sharing this as a gotcha is embarrassing.”

Related Reading: Cardano Kicks Off Independent Audit Of ADA RedemptionAkua—the project for which Alexander is seeking financing—is described in a 28 February 2025 white paper as “a novel approach to prediction markets focused on natural-disaster risk management,” starting with earthquakes and expanding to other phenomena. The protocol architecture is designed for EVM compatibility, a detail that Cardano community engineer Lucas (@rvcas) seized upon when he argued that Alexander’s accusations were a marketing ploy: “Monad is trying to drop an ETH dapp and this is his way of getting attention from that crowd … He is financially motivated and probably has no genuine interest from an integrity perspective.”

Hoskinson echoed that assessment, calling the episode a smear orchestrated to court Ethereum investors. He has also threatened legal action and commissioned an independent audit of the disputed treasury transactions, an exercise he says will show that more than 99.8% of the original vouchers were redeemed and that the residual balance—about 18-24 million ADA—was ultimately donated to Intersect, the new member-based governance body.

Why The Cardano Token Vouchers Were Swept

In a longer X post on Wednesday, Hoskinson revisited the mechanics of the 2021 voucher sweep, arguing that Japanese retail buyers—many elderly—had struggled with the original redemption process. “There was a commercial liability for completing the redemption … If the buyer couldn’t reasonably use that method, there was a moral obligation to change the redemption mechanism,” he wrote, adding that two of the three genesis key-holders had to sign the hard-fork upgrade that removed the unredeemed addresses.

Related Reading: Cardano Founder Reflects On Betrayal, Plans To Step BackHoskinson maintains that no ADA was “stolen,” calling the narrative “absurd, goal-post-moving doublespeak” and condemning media headlines that suggested otherwise. Alexander, by contrast, likens the voucher sweep to a unilateral rewrite of history that deprived early investors of their coins, arguing that only about $7 million of the swept funds have surfaced at Intersect.

As reported by Bitcoinist on Wednesday, the ADA voucher audit redemption audit by global law firm McDermott Will & Emery (MW&E) and the audit heavyweight BDO will give a definitive answer when finished. A publication date is not yet known.

At press time, ADA traded at $0.7889.

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