Transcription
Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is January 9th, 2026. We're not sleeping. We're working. We're pushing hard. We're getting things done. And we're having a lot of fun.
You know, it's really good to return to first principles, write code again, think uh about how the world works, get things done. Uh, Midnight is just incredible project. We got an amazing series workshops next week. Everybody's getting ready for it. We're getting ready for the Japan tour. We're super excited, super fired up, super ready to go uh for Japan. Going to Hokkaido all the way down Okinawa. Walking the entire Japanese archipelago and kind of kick Japan a little bit. Wake it up. Say, "Hey, got something new. Fourth generation is coming. You got that rational privacy. You got that chain abstraction. You got that smart compliance. We got some cool stuff. We're fired up."
And then, of course, we got Consensus Hong Kong right on the back of that. So, we're ready to go. We're fired up for that, too. Uh, and we got some amazing announcements and special surprises for people there. There's some cool things we're going to be able to show you. Uh, and also I uh we have the Pentat is working real hard. You know, obviously Christmas slowed everything down because we're ready to sign some contracts, but uh the other side's like, "We're taking Christmas off." We're like, "Fuck you, man. We want to sign stuff. We want to announce some things about integrations for Cardano." Uh so those haven't been forgotten. Uh we're we're really excited about some bridges and more oracles and uh stable coins and analytics and uh look for those soon. Uh you know, more listings coming too.
But overall, you know, the KPIs uh have been uh set in stone and we told everybody this is the standard. Got to grab the boat. Got to carry the boat. There's no excuses. There's no, "Well, I just didn't have the time or I didn't know how." Uh, be honest with you, I've been staying up to about 2,00 3:00 in the morning every night. Been getting up at about six o'clock in the morning. I'm not sleeping much, but I don't [ __ ] care because we got [ __ ] to do. We got places to go. We got things to do. This is our year. 2026 going to be a good year.
Uh, and you know, it's a year where we've been promising and saying and saying and saying as an industry, uh, and to be frank, we've been writing checks as an industry, we cannot cash. And I'm so tired of that as an industry. You're tired of that as an industry. We don't want to do this anymore. You know what we want is real world adoption, real world assets, real world utility. We want every business on a blockchain. We want every uh ecosystem on a blockchain. We don't give a [ __ ] where it comes from. It's got to get done. Full stop. Just got to get done.
So, overall, you know, pretty excited about uh you know, the the process, pretty excited about the people. Uh and uh you know, we get to do a lot of really cool new things. You know, when we go to Japan, we get to talk about the fourth generation for the first time ever in earnest with lots of people around and kind of refine the messaging and the language and get people excited about what's coming and why it's interesting especially cool and really exciting. You know, uh you know, applications with privacy embedded inside of them. the pentad structure gets to get all these commercially critical integrations and you know what Cardano is no longer an island talks to everything works with everything liquidity users TVL all that stuff could just flow freely and the next stage after pentad phase one is the exciting stage so I'm going to propose that we take the top 15 dabs top 20 dabs we got to figure out a list on Cardono and get them sons of [ __ ] upgraded to Bitcoin DeFi XRP DeFi and Midnight night and also get them tier one listings, get them aboard, get them incubated, accelerated so we can 10x their TVL, their users and their transaction volume. Let's take care of our own as an ecosystem. You know, we got to get that done, too. There's a lot more infrastructure we got to build. We got to get the CCI done. So, that's the first order. Uh, but it's not long after we can start turning the crank and get these guys upgraded because a lot of people ask me like, how will Cardano D5 be competitive? It's not going to be competitive by being slightly better, slightly faster, slightly cheaper than Ethereum or Salada. Just not going to happen. Sweet tried that, others tried that. Doesn't work. You know, there's a copy of a copy of a copy. You got to do new stuff. You got to do interesting things. You got to bring to the table new experiences. You don't beat Map Quest by building a slightly better Map Quest. You beat Map Quest by having Google Maps on the iPhone. And then every like, "Holy [ __ ] let's get that done." Yeah, I like it. Like five fingers. I got multi-touch. I'm not printing out the map anymore and putting it on the side. And if I miss the turn off, I have to get the old damn map. You young kids. You know, I still remember that when I learned how to drive. That was my life. You beat those guys by doing something that no one's ever seen before. And when you add privacy and get private stable coins, that's going to be sexy. show private prediction markets, private dexes, you're bringing something new to the conversation. You're bringing something new to the table, something that people haven't seen before. And if you got all the bridge infrastructure and the stable coins, all this other stuff, you're bringing it to Salana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, XRP, BNB, you're bringing it to Avalanche. You're bringing it to the rest of the industry. All those users are like, "Hell yeah, we want some of that. We like that." That's how we get the TVL up and that's how we get the transactions up.
So, you know what? Everybody's doing their [ __ ] job. They're fired up. They're ready to go. We're writing code, you know? We're working 24/7. We're working weekends. I think JJ's gone to Argentina like 26 times at this point. I think he's got a girlfriend there, maybe two. He's getting his ass kicked. Uh, you know, and that's exactly the way it should be. You got to wake up every day and carry the boat. Uh, and the same for Fami Say and everybody at the Midnight Foundation. And they're working their asses off, too. I have never seen a group of people work as hard as them. Same for the Cardano Foundation. They're working harder than they've ever worked. Same for Emergo. They're working harder than they've ever worked. Same for Intersect. You know, everybody in the ecosystem wants to win. We're inspired to win. And I fully appreciate how hard times have been. 2025 was the worst year in the history of crypto. It was the year where the US government rugpulled us. They they teased us like a lap dance, but we didn't get to seal the deal. We didn't get the first base, you know? They they they uh they said they were going to do all this stuff. The Reserve, the Clarity Act, they were going to the government's going to adopt crypto, buy crypto, integrate crypto. They didn't do any of that [ __ ] You know, shame on us for trusting the bastards. You know, it's just the way they've always been. And we're not going to win because the US government tells us we're going to win. We're gonna win because we're the good guys and there's billions of us. You know what? The world deserves crypto. It's a global product. There's no such thing as an American cryptocurrency. And there's no [ __ ] shortcut to be an American cryptocurrency. None. You're global cryptocurrency. You're there for everyone, everywhere, all the time, every time. Stop believing otherwise and stop getting caught up in the miasma of things.
It's good to be off Twitter. Still broadcasting to it. But you know what? Haven't read a comment in nine days and I'm healthier and happier than I've ever been. Even though I'm only sleeping three hours and I'm writing code till 3:00 in the morning. You know, I'm having fun. I'm enjoying it again. It's good to be back. It's good to understand how all these systems work. It's good to read code. It's good to go through repos. Good to read papers. It's good to think and be done with this drama. I was in the midnight discord today and all these people were coming. Oh, the price is going down. Oh, the price. Oh, it's all over. It's all over. I said, get the [ __ ] out of the Discord. You want to complain about it? Go home. Go to X. Go to YouTube commas. Go somewhere else where people care. We don't care there. You know, the whole point of that Discord is what are we going to do to make midnight better? How do we make midnight better? When are we going to do that? Who wants to partner? Who wants to build? I got time to work with you and for you to get your [ __ ] done, but I haven't got time. Pump your bags. We're here to change the [ __ ] world. And yeah, the markets are going to be stagnant for a little bit longer and uh all kinds of [ __ ] is just going to keep coming down the pipe. You know, we've gotten so used to it that let's not let it bother us as an industry. Let's get back to business. We got a new generation to build, new narrative, and we're going to 10x the population of cryptocurrency. We're going to 10x the assets under management in the cryptocurrency space. If we play our cards right, the vast majority of securities will be traded on cryptocurrency rails, not in exchanges, by 2030. If we play our cards right, you can use the cryptocurrency from your cell phone. Don't need a wallet. Just works. Tap to pay and it's instantaneous and damn near free and it works everywhere for everyone everywhere. Cost nothing by 2030. Let's go do that. Are you tired of losing? Let's go win. Let's go do that. Why not us? We got the technology. We got the people. We got the gigab brains. We got the engineers. We got the community. We got the decentralized governance. We got the decentralized network put all the hard work in. 10 [ __ ] years of grinding, grinding, grinding. What do you think this means? We just did nothing. We were all just McDonald's waiting for the ice cream machine to get fixed. That'll never happen. I can promise you anything in the world, but I can't fix the McDonald's ice cream machine. Guys, that's not what we're doing here. We're changing the world.
So before I go home and eat my ice cream, my one little vice gluttony amongst others, wanted to make a video, tell all you guys this is going to be a good year. No matter if you want it or not, we're going to drag your ass kicking and screaming to the finish line and we're going to have fun and we're going to enjoy it. Or I will turn this car around, kids. and you're gonna love every [ __ ] minute of it. So, stop whining, stop complaining, and enjoy life. You know, these are the best times ever. There's so many cool things and so many wonders, and we have agency. We're in charge, and we can win. Uh we got a great game plan with Laos and Hydra. We got a great thing going with the Pentad. We're getting those integrations done. Midnight launched and it launched more valuable than a Leo, ZKY, Starkware, and Mina combined. So, stop crying. It's doing good. And you know what? It's going to do better. Japan tour is going to be phenomenal and incredible. Hong Kong's going to be phenomenal and incredible. And then the rest of the year, every two months, bag of goodies comes. That's the cadence. It's the death march. The team knows it. They're sad that they have to do all the work, but they're happy that they have the privilege to make it happen. And I'm very glad how many of you have stepped up to be ambassadors. There's an overwhelming number of people who applied. I'm finally going to be able to meet a lot of them in person. Uh, you know, we're making a big shakeup at IO. We're adding some people, get rid of some people to uh rebuild our social media, to rebuild our Discord strategy, change the way we interface with people. And every two weeks, I say, "What have you done for me lately?" That's the rope we give. It's not long anymore because we got a lot to do and we measure things quickly and we get things done. We haven't lost the formalism. In fact, we have even more rigorous formalism thanks to our good friend LLMs. We can actually check things at levels that have never been checked before. In fact, I'm designing a new model called IMO stands for intention models and uh oracles that I think is going to become the gold standard for testing ZK systems especially when if it's a you know canonical executable specification oracle and you'll see that in the repo if you guys want to start it. In fact, I'll give it to you. [ __ ] it, why not? Working out every day, getting it done. Got to start the cold plunges again Monday next week. Get that done. Ready to go. Have the dog watching me while I'm in the water. Be like, "What are you doing, man? That's crazy. That's ice water. You don't go in there, man." I said, "Sorry. Got to get her done. It's just what we do now. It's just what we do. Going full gogggins probably not a good idea. I don't give a [ __ ] So anyway, happy new year. Careful what you signed up for. You signed up for a revolution. And guess what? You're going to get one. Good night, everybody.