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Guest profile
Charles Hoskinson
Co-Founder of Ethereum, Founder and CEO of Input Output Global
Charles Hoskinson is an American entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Input Output (IOG, formerly IOHK), the research and engineering company behind the Cardano blockchain and the Midnight privacy network.
Born in Hawaii in 1987, he studied mathematics at Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder. He started the Bitcoin Education Project in 2013 and joined Ethereum late that year as one of its original founders and its chief executive, and left in 2014.
He then co-founded IOHK with Jeremy Wood, and Cardano launched publicly in 2017. Hoskinson is known for a research-first, peer-reviewed approach to protocol design.
Outside crypto he has funded the Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University with a 20 million dollar donation, owns a ranch in Wyoming, and opened the Hoskinson Health and Wellness Clinic in Gillette, Wyoming. In 2026 his focus includes Midnight, whose genesis block was produced in March 2026, and Cardano scaling and Bitcoin DeFi work.
1:24:51
Latest interview · Apr 24, 2026Charles Hoskinson on why the Clarity Act misses crypto's real needsWatch the episode →
Key points
- Privacy and identity infrastructure are structural requirements for blockchain adoption, not optional features, as transparency enables future de-platforming and economic censorship.
- The Clarity Act requires fundamental rebuilding rather than refinement to properly address institutional adoption concerns around sensitive data on-chain.
- Fourth-generation blockchain technology must enable selective disclosure—proving attributes like location or ethnicity while preserving privacy—to support regulated business use cases.
- Cross-chain interoperability standards and multi-chain infrastructure are essential for consumer adoption, requiring users to remain unaware they are using cryptocurrency.
- Midnight is designed as ecosystem-agnostic privacy infrastructure for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and Solana rather than a single-chain solution.
In their own words
“If they have to know how crypto works or what chain they're on, you've done it wrong.”
“I think that trilemma is a false one, and it's an afterthought of a lack of good protocol design.”
“I'd much rather fight a court case with ambiguity than fight a court case where the law is not on my side.”
“It doesn't actually matter who wins, as long as whoever wins has the right principles.”
Every appearance on Crypto Coin Show
Latest episode shown above.
20:37Charles Hoskinson in the news
- Soda Labs closes $3M seed round for private blockchain transactionsOct 8, 2026
- Hoskinson pitches Midnight’s Night Mode on TOKEN2049 main stageOct 8, 2026
- Input Output loses Cardano treasury vote despite committee unanimous backingSep 20, 2026
- Charles Hoskinson Has a Theory for AI Outage Affecting ChatGPT, Claude and GrokSep 3, 2026
- Cardano Advances Decentralization as Specialist Partners Take Ownership of Core InfrastructureJul 29, 2026
