Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, recently burned 900 billion “Charles” tokens that were created without any kind of official association to it from his side.
All of this took place during a live session in which he discussed his annoyance with a meme token in his name. The token eventually started off as a joke but quickly became popular with heavy interest in no time.
Everything began when Hoskinson was live demonstrating Cardano’s Lace wallet. He accidentally displayed his backup wallet while explaining its features, which was not the plan.
As usual, the crypto community, always on the lookout for opportunities, used this slip-up to send him tokens. One of these tokens called the “Charles” token, gained attention and shot up in value, reaching millions in market value in just one day.
Hoskinson was left holding 900 billion of these tokens, which he immediately deemed worthless. Despite the unexpected windfall, he made it clear that he had no interest in these tokens because they had no liquidity and weren’t valuable.
Rather than ignoring the matter, he chose to burn all such tokens. With a script developed by his team, Hoskinson sent all such tokens to a “burner” address, effectively making them irretrievable in any manner.
The entire burn session took place in real-time in the broadcast, in which Hoskinson humorously mentioned that he had just torched $80 million in value. “I think this is the first time in my life I’ve ever burnt $60 million, $70 million, $80 million of value,” he said.
It only cost him 1.42 ADA to destroy the tokens, which was a small price for making a statement. Hoskinson made it clear that he had no intention of profiting from the situation, instead using the event to show his integrity and commitment to the Cardano community.
At the end of the broadcast, he told the community, “Don’t do that again.”
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