Hoskinson Fires Back: $600M Cardano Attack Was Ethereum-Funded Hit Job

Charles Hoskinson drops bombshell allegation—claims coordinated smear campaign against Cardano was bankrolled by Ethereum backers.

The Cardano founder didn’t mince words, framing the $600 million narrative as a deliberate market manipulation play. ’Classic crypto turf war,’ he quipped, ’with better financials than most DeFi projects.’

Industry watchers note the timing coincides with Ethereum’s latest scaling struggles—but then again, when doesn’t drama spike around gas fee season?

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.

Hoskinson 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.