ADA Founder Charles Hoskinson Addresses Congress on Crypto and Blockchain

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano (ADA), is currently testifying before Congress in an effort to elaborate on the practical applications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Hoskinson claims in prepared testimony to Congress on the subject of digital asset regulation that blockchain technology is beneficial to the growth of marketplaces owing to the fact that it is decentralized and does not require authorization to operate.

“Distributed ledgers (i.e., blockchains) store information that needs to be transparent, auditable, timestamped and immutable. This process enables records of social and economic concerns to be reliable and programmable.

Public blockchains, just like many commodities, are intrinsically decentralized and permissionless. For example, I grow hay on my farm in Colorado. I did not ask for permission to plant and harvest my hay, and now I am a member of a global, dynamic marketplace. There are regulations and controls in all of these markets, but we do not assume there is a centralized hay agency to ensure somehow this market works.

Such absurdities were reserved for the Soviet central planners of old, not modern economies. Blockchain projects operate and embody this decentralized ethos and would fail under the weight of a heavy-handed and outdated regulatory structure.”

According to the Chief Executive Officer of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), digitizing the logistics of large-scale companies would make those companies more structured and transparent to the relevant authorities.

“As a rancher, I have to deal with water rights, grazing leases, public land authorities, and numerous other agreements, covenants and economic events.

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The management and oversight of much of these activities are not digitized, nor are they shared in ways to provide emergent value to policymakers, regulators and researchers. When these activities are conducted and managed, and the resulting information is shared, on a blockchain they are transparent and auditable.”

Hoskinson says Cardano developer IOHK is teaming up with the Ethiopian government to create blockchain-based digital identities and academic records for students and teachers, which would track their achievements and credentials.

“[We are] working with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education to create a blockchain-based digital identity and verifiable academic credentials for five million students and teachers in the country.

The goal of this vital project is to enable data-driven policy-making and simultaneously allow students to prove their educational achievements internally and across borders to universities and the job market by reducing the risk of fraud.”

Hoskinson also says his company is helping small-to-medium size businesses access lending services they otherwise wouldn’t be able to take advantage of.

“In Kenya and Ghana, in order to tackle the financing gap through an ecosystem of products that remove the frictions between crypto liquidity and real-world economic activities to offer cheaper financial products, IOG has partnered with Pezesha Africa Limited to facilitate loans to small and medium sized businesses looking for short term loans for working capital. The goal is to build simple friction-free tools that enable seamless lending.”

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