“Crypto was born in the financial crisis of 2008”

Web Summit 2022, an annual technology conference in Lisbon, is over and Cardano (ADA) founder and Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Charles Hoskinson has made statements about the genesis of the crypto industry. According to the CEO of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the company behind Cardano, the crypto industry was born as a response to the problems that led to the financial crisis in 2008:

“We didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Let’s replace a perfectly good system.’ Crypto was born in 2008.”

Thus, according to Hoskinson, cryptocurrencies arose in the attempt to overcome the recession and other problems of the traditional finance to solve.

The year 2008 was the year of the fall of the American bank ‘Lehman Brothers’, the year of the mortgage crisis and the year with an unprecedented number of unemployed. Confidence in the economy and the banks logically fell to an all-time low. In this time, the white paper of bitcoin (BTC) has also been distributed to a so-called cryptography mailing list. Trust is no longer a requirement within the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin is the first form of money that has replaced the element of trust with mathematics. All in all, Hoskinson’s statement is a very logical observation.

Cardano and Africa

At Web Summit, Hoskinson also made statements about some current financial problems:

“Billions of people have no economic identity, there is inequality everywhere, it is difficult to get a loan, and the 5% interest on microfinance in Africa.”

IOHK has been focused on the African continent for a long time and here Hoskinson again refers to the financial problems in Africa. The team behind Cardano sees this continent as a great opportunity and hopes to convince African countries and communities of the potential of blockchain technology.

Cardano has very ambitious goals in that regard and wants Africans to benefit from blockchain technology.