Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson Denies $619M ADA Scam Allegation

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano is facing some strong accusations on X (formerly Twitter) over ₳318 million (around $619 million) in ADA funds.

A few hours ago, crypto influencer @masatoalexander claimed Hoskinson used special access to move an unclaimed ADA without permission. 

According to the post , the funds were originally linked to Attain Corp, a company reportedly formed before Emutgo, one of Cardano’s founding firms. He said these tokens were sold to investors in Japan, many of whom were elderly and later said they felt misled or scammed.

Masato alleges that the funds were not part of the original Cardano launch pool, but were ADA sold directly to individuals. “Charles had no mandate to decide what to do with the funds and violated the most basic tenets of crypto,” He said.

Moreover, Masato argued that this broke the idea of decentralized control that Cardano promotes. He also referenced Charles’s recent comments about “community governance,” calling it ironic given the unilateral action. To support all this claim, Masato pointed out that Charles cited the “statute of limitations” as a reason for not owing anything more after seven years.

Masato calls out Charles’ ‘statute of limitations’ claim after 7 years | Source: X

He added that if Hoskinson wanted to prove the move was legal, he should show two key pieces of proof: the original contracts that allowed funds to be moved if left unclaimed, and a transaction trail proving any donations to Intersect, a Cardano-affiliated group

Hoskinson immediately responded and denied the accusation. “You keep lying to people,” he tweeted. He said the ADA vouchers had become unspendable after a hard fork and were later managed through a custodial account handled by the Token Generation Event (TGE). 

He added that this account kept distributing the ADA to original buyers for another three years. He also said he would send a cease and desist letter and start legal steps if the accusations continued.

Hoskinson Respond to the allegation | Source: X

Masato replied with, “code is law charles,” and later mocked the idea of legal threats. Instead, he jokingly offered a challenge to “go into a dark cave together and see who comes out first.”