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Cardano's Charles Hoskinson Suggests Swapping $100M of ADA for Bitcoin, Stablecoins

The proposal appears at to be at odds with previous comments from Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard.

Consensus 2025: Charles Hoskinson, CEO & Founder, Input Output
Consensus 2025: Charles Hoskinson, CEO & Founder, Input Output (Consensus)

What to know:

  • Charles Hoskinson proposed converting $100M of ADA into bitcoin and stablecoins (USDM, USDA) to boost Cardano’s DeFi and stablecoin ecosystem.
  • He dismissed concerns over market impact, saying that the token does not have an issue with liquidity.
  • The proposal contrasts with Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard’s view that TVL is not a key adoption metric.

Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson has floated the idea of converting $100 million worth of ADA tokens into bitcoin

and stablecoins.

"We could take $100 million of ADA in the treasury, convert it to a blend of stablecoins incumbent in Cardano so USDM and USDA and convert some of it in bitcoin to prime bitcoin DeFi," Hoskinson said on a YouTube live stream.

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He then hit back at critics that claimed a $100 million sale would impact the price of ADA, calling them "inexperienced" before adding that the sale "would not cause any problems at all."

The goal of the sale would be getting the ratio of stablecoin issuance and TVL to around 30% to 40% versus the current roughly 10%.

Total value locked on Cardano stands at $356 million with just $31 million worth of stablecoins minted on-chain, DefiLlama data shows.

Solana meanwhile has $9.8 billion in TVL and $11 billion worth of stablecoins minted on-chain.

In a tweet Hoskinson said that the stablecoin situation is "killing Cardano" and that the proposal would generate "non-inflationary revenue" and help build the Cardano DeFi economy.

Hoskinson's comments are at odds with those of Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard, who told CoinDesk in March that TVL is not a metric he used for adoption.

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight is the co-leader of CoinDesk data tokens and data team. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022 Oliver spent three years as the chief reporter at Coin Rivet. He first started investing in bitcoin in 2013 and spent a period of his career working at a market making firm in the UK. He does not currently have any crypto holdings.

Oliver Knight