Cardano Founder Takes Unexpected Turn With CHARLES Memecoin

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and CEO of Input Output (IOG), has publicly burned a massive trove of a memecoin named in his honor. The token, simply called CHARLES, made its way into Hoskinson’s wallet after he showcased the Lace wallet platform during a live demonstration. That demonstration involved creating a new Cardano wallet, backing it up with his PGP key, and briefly revealing the paper wallet on camera—an act he intended as a display of Cardano’s security capabilities rather than an invitation to distribute unsolicited tokens.

Cardano Founder Burns $80 Million

Hoskinson expressed disbelief that he would ever have to make such a video, stating, “I never thought in my life y’all would make a video forcing me to make a video like this, but you did.” Although he initially joked about the possibility of malicious actors draining a newly exposed address, he stressed that in the current crypto landscape, especially in 2025, the more likely “threat vector” is having arbitrary tokens airdropped into one’s wallet.

In this instance, the CHARLES token appeared out of nowhere and, to the community’s surprise, quickly attracted substantial trading activity. According to Hoskinson, the token amassed a fully diluted market value of around $71 million and a 24-hour trading volume of over $5 million, all within a single day, leading to what he described as a “million percent up” flurry of speculation.

Referring to the mania surrounding this memecoin, he said, “Boy did you trade it… literally in a day, a million percent up, everybody’s playing with it.” Despite sitting on what many would interpret as a paper valuation worth tens of millions, Hoskinson showed little interest in leveraging or liquidating those tokens for personal gain. Instead, he chose to destroy them through a public act of burning.

He explained that he wrote a quick script, which his team member Lucas verified and refined, to send the tokens to a script address with no ability to retrieve funds—a “black hole” contract. Hoskinson demonstrated the process step by step, verifying the address, setting the total amount of around 900 billion CHARLES tokens (90% of the supply), and adding a note reading “thanks for all the fish” before entering his password to finalize the transaction.

Once the tokens were sent, he shared on screen the outgoing transaction and remarked that destroying such an amount of nominally valued tokens cost him just 1.42 ADA in network fees. “I think this is the first time in my life I’ve ever burnt $60 million, $70 million, $80 million of value,” he said, noting how quickly the token’s market-tracked value had shifted, at one point surpassing $80 million in perceived worth. He acknowledged the irony: “A lesser man would have found a way to slow drip that out, got a few million dollars here and there. I don’t do that. Homie don’t play that way.”

Throughout the demonstration, Hoskinson also showcased that he had tested the burning script with other tokens such as HOSKY and AGENT SNEK before carrying out the final burn of the CHARLES tokens. As soon as the transaction appeared on the blockchain explorer, he confirmed the tokens were indeed gone, observing that “there’s no way to pull funds out of it” once they arrive in the burner script’s address. At the end of the broadcast, he called upon the community not to repeat such stunts in the future, even if he admitted the spectacle of it all had been entertaining in a bizarre sense.

At press time, Cardano traded at $0.95.