Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum, has been in the news recently for comments he made as a panelist at Hong Kong Blockchain week. A number of cryptocurrencies have made it their mission to bank the unbanked but few are acting with as much ambition as Cardano.

Discussing the cryptocurrency’s operations in Africa, Charles stated, “we’ll be in twenty-five countries by the end of the year.” He went on to say that although having a physical presence in twenty-five countries is an ambitious goal, Cardano would like to have offices in every single African country within the next couple of years.

Charles went on to elaborate on what that process looks like. “Basically what we do are PPPs, we train people and then we set up public private infrastructure and we’re trying to modernize most of these governments, we modernize with blockchain technology so everything from property and business registration to voting systems to supply chain management.”

He said later that one of the largest challenges is that government officials and the citizens of these countries have a history of being exploited and are wary of lofty promises. As Charles stated, “there’s a very great degree of suspicion when you show up and say that I have this solution that’s going to solve all your problems.”

Comments JP Morgan Coin

When the moderator introduced the topic of the recently created JP Morgan coin, Charles was one of its most vocal opponents. Speaking to JP Morgan he commented, “you guys just don’t get this space, you just don’t have any idea how these things work. It’s an abomination of a cryptocurrency, it’s an abomination of a concept.”

He went on to add, “it’s just proof of concept for the sake of being a proof of concept to say that they’re in the space and they can justify some sort of bizarre executive fantasy.”

Existing Regulations and the Problem With Banking the Unbanked

One of Charles’s most salient points was about the problem of integrating citizens from developing countries into the existing financial system. He pointed out that you can’t do KYC and AML on a person who has no passport or driver’s license. With regulations as tight as they are in the financial industry, it’s impossible to bring this person in because there is no way to prove who they are and to track the flow of their funds.

In regards to this hurtle, Charles commented, “so what I have to do I have to go to these jurisdictions and find out these completely parallel systems which can actually be better but which actually isolate the nations because they still can’t play with the Western world.”

Hopefully by the time it’s feasible to onboard billions of new people into the banking system through the use of cryptocurrencies, there will be more forgiving regulations in place that will allow for their inclusion.

Charles and the entire Cardano team, along with many others in the cryptocurrency sector, are seeking to improve the financial prospects of billions of people. The comments he made at Hong Kong Blockchain week show how seriously Charles is taking this work and the steps that are being taken to move the world forward in the right direction.

Image Credits: “cliff c/Youtube”