Amid Big ADA Milestones, Charles Hoskinson Dispels Claims That Cardano Is ‘Crypto Theranos’ ⋆ ZyCrypto

IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson has come out to defend Cardano from critics who have compared it to the now-defunct biotech startup Theranos.

As part of a surprise ask-me-anything session on Feb. 22, Hoskinson asserted that Cardano is not secretive, unlike Theranos.

Hoskinson: Anyone Can Test Cardano

The tale of Theranos has become quite popular worldwide due to both the brilliance of the founder and its bewildering hype and later collapse. Founded in 2014 by a nineteen-year-old university dropout Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos was lauded for its promises to revolutionize the biomedical sector with a groundbreaking method of blood testing.

It would later turn out that Holmes was very secretive, even prohibiting her employees at Theranos from talking with each other about their activities. Moreover, the whole enterprise was a sham as its vaunted medical devices didn’t work the way Holmes had purported they would.

Hoskinson observed that Theranos is a prime example of a company that many wanted to thrive because they wanted a “female Steve Jobs”. This is the reason why the company was able to stealthily operate for years without letting the general public test its products. He stressed that Cardano, being an open-source project, can be tested by anyone or even adopted by other projects as it has already been done by Mina Protocol and Polkadot.

“Anyone in the world can fork Cardano…Anyone in the world can take our paper and implement our papers as has been done by Mina Protocol and Polkadot for some of our papers. There’s no restrictions,” Hoskinson said. 

The Cardano creator noted that this is a key feature that sets apart a legit company from fraud. A scammy company will not allow people to “see what’s behind the curtain because there’s nothing there”.

After cracks started to show in Theranos’ years-long facade, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission finally charged Holmes with fraud and ordered her to pay a $500,000 fine. In January of this year, a jury found Holmes guilty of defrauding investors of the health-testing startup out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Cardano’s Barnstorming Growth Is Ignoring The Noise

Since its launch, Cardano has been the subject of criticism from high-profile crypto insiders and investors alike. Such skeptics claim that Cardano’s technology is uncannily like Theranos’ Walgreen blood tests equipment that never worked, further alleging that the crypto project has so many overweening promises and zero users. They have also called Cardano “vaporware” built on intense hype, which is bound to fade away in the future.

Despite the naysayers, Cardano continues to hit milestones after milestones. Just yesterday, ZyCrypto reported that ADA had surpassed the 24-hour transaction volumes of both bitcoin and ethereum for the second time in history. And that’s no small feat.

ADA is changing hands at $0.8658 as of press time, representing a decline of 6.54% over the last 24 hours. Nevertheless, a panel of fintech experts at Finders is optimistic about the token’s future price performance. The panel recently highlighted ADA’s possible run to $2.79 by 2022 year-end.