Cardano Founder Burns $80M Worth of ‘Charles’ Memecoin Gifted by Community

• Charles Hoskinson created a script for the new Lace wallet to burn 900 billion Charles memecoin tokens.
• The Cardano network has completed the Plomin hard fork and established full on-chain governance.
• The unofficial Charles memecoin is down 85% in the past 24 hours.

Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson has stunned the crypto community by burning 900 billion of the unofficial ‘Charles’ meme tokens that an anonymous creator airdropped to him.

According to Hoskinson, the $80 million burn should teach us all that hype is not equal to value and that it’s important to know who is behind a project.

$80 Million Charles Memecoin Burn

In a video posted to X on Jan. 30, 2025, Hoskinson explained that he’d received a gigantic sum of Charles memecoins.

“So I’m sitting on, 900 billion of that. You’ve lost your damn mind.”

He highlights the coin’s market cap pre-burn, which stood at $6.7 million ( now $525,000 ), and notes that it’s “obviously” not worth that much as there’s so little liquidity.

“But, you know, it’s a pretty amazing thing. So anyway, I don’t play in these circles, so what I did was I wrote a quick script.”

He explains that he  created a burner wallet and, without hesitation, sent the 900 billion tokens to the address. With a grin on his face, he chuckles when he checks the fully diluted value of the burn, which totaled $84 million. In his closing words, he laughs:

“So, I am no longer a founder of this coin I suppose. Congratulations. So, anyway, don’t do that again you bastards.”

According to Hoskinson, that’s the first time he’s “ever burned $80 million dollars,” which, according to him, makes him incorruptible as he could have easily pulled a few million from it.

“I don’t do that, we don’t play that way, we just throw it away.”

Crypto Responds

Hoskinson initially received the 900 billion Charles tokens following the demonstration of a new Lace paper wallet created by Input Output, Cardano’s founding entity. Doubling down on how secure the wallet was, he confidently stated:

“[…] even if I disclose the QR code address to everyone, it will not be stolen.”

However, this prompted the anonymous unofficial Charles memecoin creator to transfer 90% of the token’s supply to the said wallet for whatever reason.

Some in the community herald this as an “absolute dream scenario” for a memecoin because, in theory, a drastic reduction in supply can typically result in very bullish price action. But, speculators were spooked, crashing the Charles memecoin by some 72% over the past 24 hours.

Some also view the move as irresponsible, questioning why the funds weren’t donated to charity, gifted elsewhere, or put to some positive use. However, if he had sold, he may have stood accused of dumping on his community.