Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson denies misusing $600M in ADA, promises full audit

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is pushing back after being accused of rewriting the network ledger to seize control of $619 million worth of ADA.

The allegations, first raised by Masato Alexander, an NFT creator, claim Charles used a “genesis key” during the 2021 Allegra hard fork to manipulate ADA token flows. But according to a statement from Charles on Monday, the Cardano Foundation is preparing an official audit report to address the issue directly.

Masato had pointed to a specific transaction dated October 24, 2021, known as Move Instantaneous Rewards (MIR), showing 318 million ADA moved from reserves into staking or treasury pools.

The transaction was flagged on Cardanoscan, fueling suspicion that the funds were quietly redirected. Critics believe the action wasn’t authorized or transparent, raising questions about how Cardano handles unclaimed or dormant ADA.

Audit underway as Charles Hoskinson pushes back

Responding to the backlash on May 6, Charles said the claims were false and misleading. He explained that ADA redemptions remained open for another three years after the MIR transaction. He added that the “vast majority of that 350 million ADA was redeemed by the original buyers,” and the whole redemption process stretched across seven years.

Charles wrote on X, “IOG never gave itself 350 million unclaimed ADA. This is a lie. The vast majority was claimed, and the remaining that was forfeited after seven years of waiting was donated to Intersect.”

Intersect is the decentralized governance body tied to Cardano’s development. While some users welcomed the explanation, others demanded independent verification.

On May 18, Charles said he’s “deeply hurt” by the mistrust and plans to step back from running his X account, possibly handing it off to a media team. He also said he’ll change how he runs AMAs and X spaces moving forward. Charles confirmed that an audit report tied to the Allegra hard fork is being prepared and will be released soon.

In an X post from April after the Paris Blockchain Week 2025, Charles said: “Cardano has a huge stockpile of Ada in its treasury, annual inflows, and is in a hypercompetitive industry. We’ve always known that 2025 would be an interim budget year to get us to a regular annual process. We shouldn’t expect perfection nor squeeze the people who have been building our ecosystem for years. I want Cardano to win. No one outside of the Cardanoverse cares about this stuff. They care about whether we win with Bitcoin Defi. They care if we ship Leios and beat the performance of Solana. They care about our adoption.”

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