Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Talks About ADA Price Outlook, NIGHT, and Bitcoin DeFi

• Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson has disclosed that the crypto market was affected by the lack of trickle-down effect in 2025. 
• He also believes that things could improve in 2026 as numerous projects are in the pipeline. 

Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson, in a December 15 video, has subjected the yearly performance of the crypto market to critical analysis. In the video, Hoskinson explained the reason behind the broad market pullback contrary to the post-halving bullish predictions.

Charles Hoskinson Speaks on the Crypto Market Pullback and Possible Cardano Reset in 2026

According to the Cardano co-founder, institutional money got locked into the Bitcoin layer this year. This disrupted and prevented the trickle-down effect that occurred in 2017 and 2021. Additionally, he pointed out that the Trump administration was expected to be more serious about the industry than it is now.

Explaining this point, Hoskinson disclosed that some industry key figures were surprised by the launch of Trumpcoin but got convinced that it could be a strategy to “shake up the market.” However, the subsequent launch of the Melaniacoin made it clear that “this was a cash-grabbing situation.”

At this point, industry players had to take matters into their own hands, as their expectations of a more permissive regulatory structure had become uncertain. Hoskinson also spoke about the announcement to establish a crypto reserve, which includes Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum (ETH).

Apart from this, authorities introduced the likes of the GENIUS Act and Clarity Act. However, US President Donald Trump’s involvement in the World Liberty Financial and the Trumpcoin created a situation where anything crypto was seen through a “political lens.”

According to Hoskinson, everything that was bipartisan in December 2024 was no longer bipartisan in June and July 2025. Per his observation, this created a lot of unnecessary “strife and blood.” Apart from this, Hoskinson spoke about how the meme craze affected the overall crypto market.

According to him, people created memecoins from the things he posted, spamming his Twitter with the hope of “getting rich by dumping on retail.” He also stated that people have been pre-programmed to think that everything is a scam, and they ended up “short-selling” legitimate projects like Midnight.

Concluding his statement, Hoskinson highlighted that 2025 was a tough year. However, 2026 could be better. He believes that the year would be filled with reset, and the next five years would be made up of “wonders and magic.”

Also, he expects 2026 to be a year of retail return. In all, the team would continue to work on Cardano, Midnight, and Bitcoin DeFi and hope that things get better.