Cardano Founder Explains Why Not Sell ADA For NIGHT
After the profitable Midnight (NIGHT) token airdrop, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is getting a well-recognized query from ADA holders: if NIGHT is the brand new token tied to Cardano’s privateness community, why not promote ADA and transfer throughout? In a Dec. 21 look on the Discover Crypto podcast, he argued the premise is flawed as a result of Midnight is designed to increase ADA, not exchange it.
Why Not Sell Cardano For NIGHT
“They’re complimentary. They do various things,” Hoskinson said. “Midnight is the ChatGPT of privacy. That’s its job. It’s a blockchain to blockchain infrastructure module. So, what Midnight does is it truly makes Cardano purposes have privateness.”
That distinction is central to his pitch: Midnight is positioned much less as a liquidity siphon and extra as an infrastructure module that provides Cardano-native apps a function set they will use to distinguish in an more and more crowded DeFi panorama. Hoskinson argued that early adopters usually tend to be Cardano purposes exactly as a result of they want a lever to compete for customers, reasonably than bigger incumbents elsewhere that are usually slower-moving.
“Which ones do you suppose are going to undertake privateness first? Uniswap and PancakeSwap and all these big issues which can be sluggish shifting they usually’re very conservative as a result of they’ve plenty of customers of worth circulate,” he stated. “No, it’ll be Cardano purposes. Because they should achieve customers and so that is how they leapfrog the competitors.”
From there, Hoskinson broadened the argument right into a cross-chain liquidity thesis, leaning closely on Bitcoin DeFi as a supply of potential inflows. He described Bitcoin as comparatively “agnostic” capital that may path to wherever yield, credit score, and utility are most accessible, and claimed Cardano’s UTXO mannequin makes it a extra pure vacation spot than account-based chains.
“When you have a look at Bitcoin… it doesn’t care if it goes to Ethereum or Solana or Cardano or different locations to get yield,” he stated. “It’s going to go to the closest continent and the closest continent is Cardano as a result of it’s a UTXO system and Bitcoin is UTXO system. So by Cardano DeFi specifically upgraded with Midnight all of a sudden Bitcoin’s going to get privateness preserving yield and credit score.”
He added that the identical privacy-preserving yield idea might lengthen past Bitcoin. “And it’s the identical for XRP and these different issues,” Hoskinson stated, arguing that Midnight’s privateness tooling is meant to “hybridize” on-chain and off-chain infrastructure reasonably than “steal TVL or steal luster from different programs.”
In sensible phrases, Hoskinson additionally tied the ADA-versus-NIGHT resolution to distribution and safety. He emphasised that Cardano “launched Midnight,” framing it as proof the ecosystem can execute large-scale initiatives whereas positioning ADA holders for preferential participation.
“If you’re an ADA holder, you get first entry to all of these items and also you get the most important proportion of the airdrop,” he stated. “And additionally, Cardano secures Midnight. So, meaning ADA holders get NIGHT tokens.”
How High Can ADA Go?
Hoskinson was additionally pressed on Cardano worth expectations. While he refrained to call any worth targets, he used that second to put out what he described as a “worth leakage” concept tied to Bitcoin’s institutional bid. He stated Bitcoin is the one asset he feels snug forecasting with any confidence, arguing that giant allocators are structurally “caught” in Bitcoin exposure via ETFs and buy-and-hold mandates, which adjustments the outdated cycle mechanic the place retail would rotate income from BTC into alts.
In that setup, he instructed the primary route for capital to spill from Bitcoin into different ecosystems shouldn’t be spot rotation, however Bitcoin DeFi yield: if Cardano can supply yield and credit score inside a danger profile that institutional holders can tolerate, demand can “leak” outward from BTC with out buyers promoting BTC outright. That is the premise for his view that chains embracing Bitcoin DeFi might transfer extra in sync with Bitcoin, whereas others might stay decorrelated, even when Bitcoin continues greater.
The broader message was much less about discouraging buying and selling habits and extra about presenting a structural rationale for staying uncovered to ADA. In Hoskinson’s framing, Midnight shouldn’t be meant to displace ADA; it’s meant to develop the set of use circumstances Cardano purposes can supply, whereas conserving ADA holders economically concerned by safety ties and token distribution.
At press time, ADA traded at $0.36.
