2025-06-15

Surprise AMA 06/15/2025

65 entries

Opens a surprise AMA, saying governance and Twitter are both hard right now.

Community & Media ask me anythingAMAs

Mocks four years of when Circle demands, noting Cardano's 9.8 percent stablecoin to TVL ratio versus Ethereum's 195 percent and Solana's 110 percent.

Ecosystem & Partnerships ETHstable coinSOL +1

He sits at the nexus of ETFs, OTC desks, and Japanese whales, and divesting 100 million ADA takes 30 to 90 days without crashing the market.

Crypto Industry & Commentary divestment

Cardano's number one problem is stablecoins and liquidity, number two is a working DeFi ecosystem, with Bitcoin DeFi bringing assets and TVL.

Conservatism is for monopolies, not chains running behind, so Cardano must be serious and take risks like its competitors do.

Governance & Catalyst

The CF deploys none of its endowment into TVL, so the treasury is the backup, but every touch takes 6 to 12 months and 40,000 opinions.

Governance & Catalyst Cardano Foundationtotal value locked

Criticizes turning the budget into 39 separate withdrawals with high thresholds, and fighting the passed 350 NCL to push a 200 NCL.

Governance & Catalyst treasury

Midnight would elsewhere be celebrated like a Roman triumph, airdropping to 37 million and paying block rewards to ADA stakers, yet gets called parasitic.

Roadmap & Product airdropSPO

CNTs are not eligible for the Midnight drop because the point is bringing in outside layer ones, and picking CNTs means picking winners.

Getting a CNT listed on major exchanges and supported by custodians and wallets helps, not hurts, the CNT ecosystem.

Ecosystem & Partnerships Cardano native tokenCNTsnative asset +1

Cardano is not a Bitcoin layer two but a layer one with a trustless BitVMX bridge, offering Bitcoin a DeFi and application layer via Taproot.

Cardano Tech & Research BTCdecentralized finance

The Midnight airdrop needs a CIP 30 wallet, so Daedalus users must recover into a supported wallet, as Daedalus is deprecated for a Lace full node.

Cardano Tech & Research Cardano Improvement ProposalCIPs

Chainlink integration stalls on priority not fees, since Sergey Nazarov is friendly but the business side sees Cardano's small DeFi, so IO looks at Pyth and Flare.

Ecosystem & Partnerships Input OutputIOHKIOG +1

The real Circle issue is who mints and deploys the first 100 million USDC, since Circle and Tether want nine figure scale to make money.

Ecosystem & Partnerships

1.3 million stake but only 30 to 50,000 use DeFi, so the goal is converting stakers to DeFi via atomic cross chain swaps and minted stablecoins.

Governance & Catalyst stakingdecentralized financecross-chain +1

Rebuts moon landing conspiracies, citing astronauts he has met, moon rocks, and Soviet confirmation of a conspiracy too large to hide.

Personal & Off-topic

The clinic's grand opening is July 4th and invites people to come see it.

Personal & Off-topic

Protocols live and die by how competitive their people are, and with decentralized governance the ecosystem must fight for itself, not wait for genesis key holders.

Governance & Catalyst competitivenessdecentralised

There are windows to dominate Bitcoin DeFi, XRP DeFi, and private computation, and Cardano must win them or become a Betamax footnote.

Roadmap & Product BTCdecentralized financeRipple

Sets aggressive KPIs: TVL over a billion, 10x transaction volume, and 250 to 300 million in stablecoin issuance in 2025.

Governance & Catalyst stable cointotal value locked

Wants to resource brand builders like Patrick Tobler instead of the community eating its own, so the ecosystem appears aggressive and fired up.

Community & Media

Supports a full psychedelics and plant medicine program in Wyoming, calling the banning of psychedelics one of medicine's great sins.

Personal & Off-topic

Argues stage 4 cancer patients should get psilocybin for end of life comfort, which prohibition cruelly denies.

Personal & Off-topic hospice

Psychedelics like ibogaine, ayahuasca, mescaline, LSD, and DMT have real uses that global prohibition blocks researching.

Personal & Off-topic

Africa is still in the portfolio with RealFi in Kenya, Uganda, and a strong ecosystem in Nigeria, while South America opens up.

Adoption & Africa

Argentina under Javier Milei put 100 billion of a 700 billion GDP into crypto and may become the first modern country with private money over central banks.

Crypto Industry & Commentary

Ethiopia's prime minister fumbled a 100 million person opportunity, so IO pivoted from African government contracts to microcredit via RealFi.

Adoption & Africa Input OutputIOHKIOG

Criticizes cancel culture using Thomas Jefferson, arguing you can hold two ideas, someone good and bad, and learn from both, like the Romans.

Vision & Philosophy

Contrasts Milei's libertarian government with El Salvador's Bukele, questioning the checks and balances behind El Salvador's Bitcoin.

Regulation & Legal BTC

Calls the Trump Musk fallout Dunning Kruger meets useful politics, saying Musk lacks people to check him and is not a government or leveraged buyout expert.

Regulation & Legal Elon MuskDOGEElon

DOGE conflated waste and fraud forensic accounting with spending reduction mergers and layoffs, which are two different skill sets.

Regulation & Legal

To cut the budget you would merge the FBI, DEA, and ATF into a leaner agency and make people reapply, not send 25 year olds through the books.

Regulation & Legal agency merger

You would second IRS CI and FBI RICO forensic accountants to hunt fraud, and the Sesame Street Baghdad line was likely a CIA operation.

Regulation & Legal

Mocks the administration using Signal to evade FOIA after years of Hillary Clinton email attacks, warning of Pegasus and Chinese hacking.

Regulation & Legal

The big beautiful bill adds 2 trillion to the debt heading to 50 trillion, where 5 percent interest is 2.5 trillion a year, the whole military and social security.

Regulation & Legal deficit

Warns defaulting on treasuries would zero out Circle and Tether stablecoins and collapse the dollar as the world reserve currency.

Regulation & Legal default

Rebuts the Haskell barrier claim by showing Aiken, around for two years, in which most Cardano smart contract code is now written, plus TypeScript.

Cardano Tech & Research

Reveals his college nickname AC from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and says the clinic is building a Midnight health chain.

Personal & Off-topic

He is now a SNEK holder after JJ negotiated the deal, praising SNEK and Hosky for getting listed and getting things done.

Ecosystem & Partnerships

Rebuts student debt forgiveness, arguing people freely signed contracts, contrasting a soldier who took fire to pay for tuition.

Regulation & Legal

Gives his four longevity foundations: good sleep, low stress, exercise, and a good diet, before any stem cells or peptides.

Personal & Off-topic

Diet is personal, driven by age, genes, and the microbiome, and anything refined, especially in America, is harmful.

Personal & Off-topic refined food

Says if he met Putin privately he would ask about Russia's China strategy, since demographic collapse leaves Russia becoming a Chinese proxy.

Vision & Philosophy

Russia has not acted in good faith despite being offered everything, losing 1.4 million people and its world standing in Ukraine.

Vision & Philosophy war

Post war recovery matters because Ukraine and Russia are interlinked by family, so serious negotiators are needed.

Vision & Philosophy negotiation

Shows a 148 page proposal to remaster his old game Legends of Valor, mapping 109 locations, built in the browser with Lace as launcher.

Personal & Off-topic

His game design method of deconstructing Legends of Valor like Denis Villeneuve dissected Blade Runner, using AI as a sounding board.

Personal & Off-topic artificial intelligence

The Midnight capacity exchange: other chains pay in their own token, Night holders generate capacity units, keeping load off Cardano while liquidity and governance stay on it.

Cardano Tech & Research

Recounts the Nessie's restaurant saga in Wheatland: a hidden ownership dispute, asbestos abatement problems, and a co-op golf course vote.

Personal & Off-topic

The 2025 market cycle is different because it is institutional led, not retail.

Crypto Industry & Commentary

His first book, on the history of Hoskinson Ranch, is coming out on book.io, written with Mark Jung.

Personal & Off-topic

Baldur's Gate 3 modernized and hit all time highs, so going back to 90s design would be a mistake.

Personal & Off-topic game design

Midnight cannot operate without Cardano because Cardano SPOs validate its blocks.

Cardano Tech & Research SPOvalidationstake pool operator +1

Rick McCracken took the CF side after the blowup and never supported him on the 600 million ADA issue, a case of ego.

Community & Media Cardano Foundation

Advises young people to keep a journal, since journaling measurably improves happiness, memory, and introspection.

Vision & Philosophy advice

Recommends personal knowledge management and second brain note taking as the biggest competitive advantage, like Luhmann's method.

Vision & Philosophy

Lace mobile is coming sooner than you think.

Roadmap & Product

World War risk is rising with the bombing of Iran and Ukraine and China Taiwan tensions.

Vision & Philosophy

Quantum Hosky is going well with Trim as product manager, and there may be a Cornucopias collaboration.

Roadmap & Product

A fond William Shatner story, praising his charisma and joy of living into his 90s.

Personal & Off-topic

The interstellar spherical objects are from another solar system but likely natural in origin.

Personal & Off-topic interstellar objects

A nearly quantum money feature using Shakir chips is coming exclusive to Lace Mobile.

Cardano Tech & Research

Dan reached out to Ada Whale who refused the call and used ChatGPT to argue, then played the victim, reiterating serious people do serious things.

Community & Media

Closes the theme that if the ecosystem makes good decisions its best days are ahead, and he can deploy 100 million in stablecoins whenever the community decides.

Governance & Catalyst stablecoin

Closes wishing a happy Father's Day and says he wants to improve the AMA format with moderation, guests, and pre filtered questions for deeper conversations.

Community & Media ask me anythingAMAs