Cardano Creator Charles Hoskinson Says Game of Crypto vs. CBDCs Now Underway – Here’s What He Means

Cardano (ADA) creator Charles Hoskinson says that the real battle in digital assets is now between cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

In a new Coin Bureau interview, the chief executive of Input Output Global warns of the dangers of CBDCs and extolls the key principles of decentralized crypto.

“It’s not a game of Ethereum versus Cardano versus Algorand versus Solana. If you think that that’s the game, we’ve already lost.

The game is crypto versus CBDCs. That’s the game. You know, there’s social credit and CBDCs for 1.2 billion people in China. It’s coming, and it’s already rolling it out. They already have a social credit to decide whether you get to ride the train, or get your passport or not. Well, it’s very trivial to say, ‘We’re going put that on your money now.’

And there are so many people in the ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) movement that say, ‘Hey, you’ve already filled up your car once this week, so we’re not going to let you buy gasoline until next week.’ They’re writing memos about how the single best way of preventing climate change is incentivizing climate-friendly behavior through the money system.

So the minute they have a CBDC, transaction discrimination happens, and then it’s going to be discriminated on two different axes: what you do with it and who you are. And if you are part of a political minority that’s being persecuted, basically you get shut out of society. And if you’re doing things that the government structure with no oversight has decided, you don’t get to do that anymore.

You’re basically you’re shut out of your money. It’s the dream of every despot, and it’s in real time for about a seventh of the entire world. And it’s going to come to Europe and America.”

Hoskinson says that legitimate crypto projects are the antithesis of CBDCs.

“The only way to get out of that is we have to go back to principles-based money and principles-based financial and economic systems. Every single cryptocurrency project that’s a real legitimate project is making contributions to fight that fight…

But we’re all together. And the vindication will be the adoption of these principles and philosophies. It’s hard to say which particular protocol is going to win because all kinds of crazy things could happen in society.”