Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson took aim at Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse in a January 18, 2026 video, criticizing what he framed as an industry push to accept the US Clarity Act on terms that would expand the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority over new projects. Speaking on Jan 18, Hoskinson described the proposal as swollen by 137 amendments and tilted toward the SEC. In his telling, the measure would force crypto projects to “go beg and plead” for relief, with “all new projects” treated as securities by default.
Hoskinson argued that the outcome would be a strategic own-goal, worse than the policy uncertainty the industry has been trying to escape. “How is that any better than what Scary Gary Gensler gave us under Biden?” he said, referencing the SEC’s enforcement action against the crypto industry under former US President Joe Biden, before extending the critique to lobbying and political dealmaking more broadly. He then framed the decision as effectively irreversible once legislated, invoking the long life of US securities law to argue that a flawed framework would calcify. “And tell me, how do we change it? Like we changed the Securities Exchange Act of 1933,” Hoskinson said. “93 years later, have we been able to change it? No. You pass it, you own it forever. Sorry, Brad. It’s not better than chaos. Take the chaos and fight for what’s right. Fight for integrity.”
While the Garlinghouse jab was the most explicit, Hoskinson placed it inside a larger narrative: that crypto’s purpose is being reduced to a lobbying-driven contest for acceptable market access rather than an attempt to redesign how value and identity are handled online. He argued that the industry is at risk of normalizing a world of “custodial wallet” defaults, pervasive KYC, and reversible transactions, outcomes he associated with legacy power structures rather than the original “revolution” ethos. “I didn’t sign up to hand the revolution to 15 banks,” he said, describing a future where transactions can be “frozen at a whim.” Hoskinson linked those concerns to a broader critique of technological surveillance and what he called the loss of individual “agency,” suggesting the industry’s incentive structure is pulling leaders toward comfort and access rather than confrontation.
The remarks landed amid a separate thread in his talk: a rebuke of what he called “toxic learned hopelessness” in crypto discourse. At press time, XRP traded at $1.95.
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