Cardano's Founder Lost $2.5 Million In Crypto And He Blames Trump

Charles Hoskinson said Trump-backed memecoins and unmet expectations around crypto policy weighed heavily on the market in 2025.

• Hoskinson sees 2026 as a structural reset rather than a traditional bull market.
• He doesn’t expect the CLARITY Act to get passed in the first quarter of 2026.
• The Cardano founder also said that the Trump administration’s AI and crypto czar should resign if the CLARITY Act is not passed.

Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson said he’s lost over $2.5 billion in the crypto market over the last four years and he blames 2025’s lacklustre market on President Donald Trump. 

“Trump got elected and we said, oh my god, this is gonna be the best thing in the world. US government is going to pump our bags as an industry,” Hoskinson said in a podcast with Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of All Streets on X. “The first thing Trump does is launch Trump Coin. We didn’t get CLARITY. And all this other stuff happened.”

ADA’s price rose 1.65% in the last 24 hours to $0.39. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around Cardano fell to ‘neutral’ from ‘bullish’ territory over the past day, with chatter at ‘low’ levels.

“I’ve lost over $2.5 billion over the past four years.”

– Charles Hoskinson, Founder, Cardano

Crypto Market Like Japan In 1946

Hoskinson noted that the so-called “recovery” of the cryptocurrency market in 2025 was bifurcated. Bitcoin (BTC) rose because institutions were buying and there are numerous structured financial products to support its price. “But none of that trickled into the altcoin space… We didn’t get the bull market that was promised,” he said.

According to the Cardano founder, 2026 will not be a bull market. It’s going to be a reset of the industry, with the next generation of crypto evolution slated to change the dynamics. “It’s kind of like Japan 1946. We’ve been carpet nuked, all the cities have been fire bombed. It’s pretty grim. But we can rebuild. And we’ll make it better and eventually get Super Mario at the end of the rainbow,” he said.

David Sacks Should Resign If CLARITY Act Doesn’t Pass

Hoskinson is also skeptical that the CLARITY Act will pass this quarter. According to him, if it doesn’t pass by March and democrats retake the House, there won’t be another opportunity for the bill to pass until 2029.

“If it doesn’t pass this quarter, [David] Sacks should resign. He’s utterly failed us as an industry,” he said. David Sacks was appointed by the Trump administration to be the government’s AI and crypto czar. Even if the CLARITY Act passes, Hoskinson said it's unlikely to have any material impact since it’s likely to take at least another two to three years before the rule-making process gets completed.

The CLARITY Act, also called the market structure bill, was slated for a markup in the Senate later this week but has reportedly been delayed to the last week of January now.

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