Charles Hoskinson is passionate about injecting himself with stem cells and investing in bioluminescent plants. This article is sourced from an article by Ben Weiss titled “Why Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson became crypto’s patron of the weird and wild,” compiled, translated, and written by PANews.
“Challenges”
Forward-thinking projects
Bioluminescent plants
Longevity science
Cardano blockchain founder Charles Hoskinson likes to talk about cryptocurrency. The 36-year-old billionaire also likes to talk about aliens. In 2023, he funded an expedition to Papua New Guinea to see if celestial objects might be of alien origin, but the results were negative.
He also likes to talk endlessly about bison. He owns an 11,000-acre ranch in Wyoming, where he raises 600 of these docile herbivores. In an interview, he explained, “You can’t handle bison like a cowboy does.” “Bison need to roam free.”
Hoskinson’s partial family lineage can be traced back to Florence, Italy, and he jokes that he might be related to the powerful banking family, the Medici family, who commissioned works by Leonardo da Vinci, and others.
In other words, this leader in the cryptocurrency industry is a true “Renaissance man.”
Hoskinson may not be a ruler of an Italian city-state, but he does have a capital background.
In 2017, he helped launch Cardano, a blockchain aimed at challenging Ethereum’s L1 blockchain, and he also co-founded Ethereum.
Although Cardano is often labeled a “zombie chain” or compared to other L1 blockchains like Ethereum or Solana with less on-chain activity, according to DefiLlama data, Cardano’s (ADA) market value is about $12.5 billion. (PANews note: Hoskinson recently stated in an interview that he has changed his position on Bitcoin and announced that Cardano L1 will transition to Bitcoin L2.)
In June of this year, when responding to comments that blockchain has nothing to do with the real world, Hoskinson stated, “If we must address the economic, political, and social problems that we all face in the real world, it will be a huge force that will drag down the entire industry.”
Nevertheless, Hoskinson’s hobbies have attracted the attention of some cryptocurrency users. Recently in Singapore, Hoskinson detailed what motivated his diverse interests. Hoskinson stated, “I just like solving challenges.”
Other cryptocurrency founders have also spent a lot of money to support their “fancy” endeavors. Another co-founder of Ethereum, Gavin Wood, invested in his DJ business. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes bought a fish tank with three blacktip reef sharks for his cryptocurrency exchange office in Hong Kong. Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, bought a violin that once belonged to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great.
However, despite owning a private jet and a Blackhawk helicopter and claiming to have a net worth of about $1.2 billion, Hoskinson is a supporter of forward-thinking projects.
“I and Steve Wolfram (computer scientist) and all these people are friends.” “They always bring their most pressing issues, and when you work with them, you can make these most pressing issues your own.”
On a personal level, Hoskinson is not a flashy Silicon Valley tycoon but a friendly scholar. After growing up in Hawaii, he became one of the original eight co-founders of Ethereum in the early 2010s. Soon, the relationship between him and Vitalik Buterin, the main architect of the blockchain network, became tense.
Hoskinson wanted the co-founder of Ethereum to establish a for-profit entity and accept venture capital. Buterin wanted to maintain a non-profit organization.
In the second half of 2014, Hoskinson left Ethereum, and the following year, he co-founded Input Output (IOHK) with former colleague Jeremy Wood. IOHK is a general company engaged in all blockchain businesses, with its most famous product being Cardano. It is also involved in other projects, including Cardano sidechain Midnight and Cardano wallet Daedalus.
Hoskinson’s interests are not limited to cryptography or blockchain. He also likes bioluminescent plants.
“If you want to address global warming or improve the environment, then participating in plant genetic engineering makes sense.”
He believes that custom-made plants can not only produce organic lighting but also sequester carbon, eliminate toxic chemicals, and provide other environmental benefits.
He showed a photo on his phone of himself smiling in the dark, holding a neon green plant. He believes that cultivating tobacco and thale cress are some of the species his team has illuminated.
Although Hoskinson refused to elaborate on the biological mechanism that makes his plants glow, he did say that his team has used a new technology called CRISPR, which involves gene-editing enzymes.
Hoskinson plans to publicly showcase these plants within a year. He also mentioned bioluminescent cannabis in biotechnology.
“If it contains a lot of THC, it will emit red light,” he said thoughtfully, THC being the active ingredient in cannabis. “With just a little, it will emit green light.”
Hoskinson is also enthusiastic about injecting himself with stem cells, which play a crucial role in medical research.
Both his father and brother are doctors. Hoskinson invested $100 million to establish a health and wellness organization called Hoskinson in Gillette, Wyoming. The institution is set to begin its first supervised research trial by the US Food and Drug Administration next year.
Like many wealthy tech company founders, Hoskinson is interested in longevity science. The research trial will evaluate the effectiveness of combining stem cell injections with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or the effectiveness of patients breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber.
“If my hypothesis is correct, we can reverse aging by more than 10 years.” The first batch of test subjects includes Hoskinson himself. “I’m getting fatter and older, and it would be great if I could live longer and healthier.”
Doctors have already extracted his stem cells, and his miniature Hoskinson cells have already begun to divide in his institution. When the FDA approves the clinical trial, Hoskinson will begin receiving injections.
But this is not his only medical project.
By next summer, he plans to expand his health center in Wyoming to 70,000 square feet and incorporate disciplines such as cardiology, radiology, and immunology.
And, like any good Medici family, he will place “priceless artworks” in the expanded clinic.
These include a “four-dimensional object,” inspired by the Japanese legendary artist Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Room,” and a 6-foot-tall Godzilla-themed three-dimensional model.