- Cardano inventor Charles Hoskinson has warned in an AMA that cryptocurrencies with increasing adaptation could face increasing political pressure and even a ban.
- A back door for governments to access anonymous data of users on the Cardano blockchain is not an option for Hoskinson.
In an Ask-me-Anything (AMA) streamed on YouTube this weekend, Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK and inventor of Cardano, pointed out the nature of cryptocurrencies and why Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin. As Hoskinson explained, cryptocurrencies revolutionize the fundamental nature of money by creating financial systems that are free from government control. Therefore, crypto proponents and investors should never forget that they are a very political:
Crypto is a political movement. Crypto is as political as it gets, always. Never forget that. We’re going to reinvent the concept of money and take it out of the government’s hands and control it ourselves.
What are the actual [consequences]of these systems getting adopted? You start realizing that everything has to change: trade changes, property rights change, business change, the business structure changes, laws change.
Hoskinson went on to state in the AMA that money is the driving force of politics and society as a whole. That is why advocates of cryptocurrencies must be prepared for increasing political pressure and growing demands for a ban. The more adaptation and acceptance cryptocurrencies will find, the greater the pressure could become:
Everything is political because money is the biggest influence of all of politics. If there’s money to be made, laws will be made, changes will be made, regulations will be instituted. The vast majority of the key driver society is all about scarcity and managing that and the economics around money.
Hoskinson also warns that there are already members of the US Senate and Congress who are calling for laws against the possession and use of cryptocurrencies. The inventor of Cardano therefore urges all crypto investors to become politically active:
What happens after you have five million dollars of cryptocurrency and then you have a politician say, ‘I want to ban that and make it illegal for you to have that and confiscate it from you?’ Are you not going to be political? Are you not going to wake up and be like ‘I need to hire a lobbyist and get this guy out of office?’.
There are people in the Senate and the Congress today in the United States and all around the world who want to ban crypto. So if you’re in this industry, what do you do? Do you just roll over like a dead dog and say, ‘It was a lot of fun okay, alright, whatever.’ No, I’m sorry, you have to have an opinion. You have to fight for the right things.
Regarding anonymous cryptocurrencies and the Cardano blockchain, Hoskinson described how governments around the world are stepping up their fight against encryption. But for him, there is no option of putting a “back door” in Cardano to allow governments or small groups to control ADA.
Right now, there’s a strong movement to ban encryption so that when you have encryption, you need to have a backdoor in the system. Will you guys use Cardano if it has backdoors in it and we designed the system that way and some small group of people have control over your money and at any time can freeze it? How many of you would use that? Guess what, we’ve just entered into the realm of politics now talking about that.
