Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and CEO of Input Output (IOG), has publicly burned a massive trove of a memecoin named in his honor. The token, simply called CHARLES, made its way into Hoskinson’s wallet after he showcased the Lace wallet platform during a live demonstration. That demonstration involved creating a new Cardano wallet, backing it up with his PGP key, and briefly revealing the paper wallet on camera—an act he intended as a display of Cardano’s security capabilities rather than an invitation to distribute unsolicited tokens.
Cardano Founder Burns $80 Million
Hoskinson expressed disbelief that he would ever have to make such a video, stating, “I never thought in my life y’all would make a video forcing me to make a video like this, but you did.” Although he initially joked about the possibility of malicious actors draining a newly exposed address, he stressed that in the current crypto landscape, especially in 2025, the more likely “threat vector” is having arbitrary tokens airdropped into one’s wallet.
In this instance, the CHARLES token appeared out of nowhere and, to the community’s surprise, quickly attracted substantial trading activity. According to Hoskinson, the token amassed a fully diluted market value of around $71 million and a 24-hour trading volume of over $5 million, all within a single day, leading to what he described as a “million percent up” flurry of speculation.
Referring to the mania surrounding this memecoin, he said, “Boy did you trade it… literally in a day, a million percent up, everybody’s playing with it.” Despite sitting on what many would interpret as a paper valuation worth tens of millions, Hoskinson showed little interest in leveraging or liquidating those tokens for personal gain. Instead, he chose to destroy them through a public act of burning.
He explained that he wrote a quick script, which his team member Lucas verified and refined, to send the tokens to a script address with no ability to retrieve funds—a “black hole” contract. Hoskinson demonstrated the process step by step, verifying the address,
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Author: Jake Simmons
