“We have no secrets” is what Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said in response to comparisons of Cardano to the now failed Theranos project. Hoskinson was speaking during a surprise AMA session that streamed on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue has revealed the ‘big $ADA news’ it has been teasing all week. The exchange announced today the addition of Cardano’s ADA as its sixth base currency. The news comes one week since the exchange announced support for Sundaeswap – a scalable decentralized exchange and automated liquidity provision protocol on Cardano.
Bitrue exchange unveils ADA as its newest base currency
Crypto exchange and long-time Cardano supporter Bitrue has added ADA as a base pair. Bitrue stated that starting tomorrow (24th February), users will have the option to trade up to nine initial coin pairs.
The first batch of pairs that will be available to users are FLUX/ADA, DGB/ADA, RSR/ADA, GAS/ADA, SNT/ADA, CTSI/ADA, BNT/ADA, LOOM/ADA, KNC/ADA. The exchange noted that it would introduce more pairs in future.
Bitrue has offered support to the Cardano ecosystem in various ways for a while now, and the move is the latest in their journey. The relationship between the two started in April 2019 when the exchange listed ADA.
In June 2021, Bitrue became the first digital assets trading platform to support Cardano native assets, the first being OccamFi. The exchange was also featured in last year’s edition of the Cardano Summit.
In his statement, Adam O’Neill, the chief marketing officer at Bitrue, explained that the decision to add ADA as a base-pair shows the exchange’s dedication to the token.
“Bitrue has shown a long-term commitment to the Cardano community […] The addition of an ADA base-pair re-affirms our commitment to this coin […] The ADA community has been growing fast throughout the world as the coin continues to pass new milestones and prove itself as one of the core currencies of the new digital finance revolution.” O’Neill said.
O’Neill also observed that the number of Cardano enthusiasts on the platform has been rising, and the introduction of ADA as a base currency will help meet their demands.
“We’ve seen an explosive growth of an ADA fanbase on Bitrue, and it is our great pleasure to provide them with convenient trading pairs utilizing ADA.”
Hoskinson dispels concerns that Cardano is crypto’s Theranos
IOHK CEO and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson yesterday rebutted claims that Cardano is carving a path similar to the defunct Theranos project. Theranos was ‘developed’ by 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes in 2003 under the guise of having technology that would revolutionize blood testing in the medical industry.
It snowballed and hit a $10 billion valuation by 2013, having raised in excess of $700 million from investors. However, the whole affair turned sour when legal and commercial questions into the viability of this apparent technology came up in 2015. This ultimately led to the collapse of the then unicorn.
Holmes was fined $500,000 by the SEC in 2018 for massive fraud in the infamous biotech scam. Early January this year, she was convicted on four counts of criminal fraud after a federal grand jury found her guilty for misleading investors into injecting hundreds of millions into a non-existent project. Her sentencing date is set for 26th September.
Hoskinson compared Theranos to a magic box as no one was allowed to explore the Edison blood-testing machines that Holmes claimed would take the medical scene to the next level.
No parallels between Theranos and Cardano
The Cardano founder explained that Holmes was able to cloud investors with a defunct project because of the culture to launch products with little scrutiny. In particular, he suggested that Silicon Valley’s desire to have a “female Steve Jobs” contributed to this scam becoming a thing.
Cardano critics have often labelled the network vapourware for its inability to translate activity into value on its ADA token. The naysayers have also censured Cardano over failure to deliver on its supposedly empty promises.
In defending the network, Hoskinson said that, unlike the biotech company, Cardano is an open-source project that has made available its material for all to review and use, even citing projects including Polkadot and Mina Protocol that have adopted it.
The tech entrepreneur cum software developer finds no reason why any firm, if legitimate, would obscure their product from the general public. He explained that Cardano is peer-reviewed and unrestricted, unlike Theranos, adding that scam projects do not let people look behind the curtain as Cardano has done.
Pipelining should help with network congestion
On the current network congestion plaguing Cardano, Hoskinson noted that blocks currently run on about 70% capacity. He added that congestion should scale down a bit as block size gets larger on the network.
He added that since scaling plans are flowing as expected, pipelining – a consensus layer scaling solution set to come onto the network in June – should have a significant impact in decongesting the chain.
To learn more about Cardano, check out our Investing in Cardano guide.
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