Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has escalated his criticism of President Donald Trump’s TRUMP memecoin, claiming in a new interview that the token’s January launch cost the industry a 70-vote Senate supermajority for the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act and triggered what he calls a “Bitcoin-only crisis.” His comments surfaced this morning in a detailed fact-check by CryptoSlate.
TRUMP trades near $5.1 today, roughly flat on the day but more than 90% below its January peak around $75. Cardano’s ADA hovers around $0.37, down about 3% in 24 hours, after a year in which Bitcoin dominance climbed above 60% and altcoins lagged badly.
What Hoskinson actually claimed
Hoskinson told interviewers that in December 2024 industry allies expected a near-lock on the CLARITY Act in the next Congress. As quoted by CryptoSlate, he framed the pre-TRUMP whip count this way:
“We were expecting about 70 senators to vote for the CLARITY act and a super majority of the house.”
He argued that Trump’s decision to launch TRUMP three days before inauguration flipped the optics for Democrats, turning crypto from a bipartisan market-structure project into an ethics story about a sitting president profiting from a meme coin while writing the rules.
A separate write-up from CoinEdition captures the same message. Hoskinson said the TRUMP and MELANIA tokens, both down more than 90% from their highs, gave opponents an easy “loophole” to attack the Clarity push and claimed support in the Senate had reached “77 votes” at one point before momentum stalled ahead of the 2026 midterms.*
The receipts: CLARITY’s path and the missing 70 votes
The public record does not show any 70-vote Senate coalition for CLARITY.
The House passed the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act on July 17 with a 294–134 vote, sending it to the Senate after months of hearings and negotiation.* Congress.gov lists the bill, H.R. 3633, as received in the Senate and referred to the Banking Committee on September 18. There is no recorded Senate floor vote or official whip list that corroborates Hoskinson’s “about 70 senators” figure.*
Where Hoskinson’s narrative does line up with the record is on optics and timing.
- Trump launched Official Trump (TRUMP) on Solana days before taking office, selling 200 million tokens while entities he controls retained 800 million, a structure ethics lawyers immediately flagged as a conflict of interest.
- By late January, the coin’s market value had briefly topped $27 billion, then slid hard, leaving small holders with billions in paper losses while Trump-linked entities booked large gains and fee revenue, according to reporting summarized by CryptoSlate’s conflict-of-interest coverage.
- On May 6, Rep. Maxine Waters canceled a joint House hearing on crypto market-structure rules and used the slot to attack “Trump’s corruption,” citing his memecoin haul and the World Liberty Financial stablecoin deal as reasons to slow broader policy work.*
That sequence matches Hoskinson’s central point that Trump’s commercial crypto ventures made it harder to keep CLARITY and other bills in a clean, bipartisan lane. It does not confirm that 70 firm Senate votes ever existed.
Did TRUMP really create a “Bitcoin-only crisis”?
Hoskinson also linked the memecoin saga to what he calls a “Bitcoin-only crisis,” arguing that government interference and the Trump scandal diverted flows from altcoins into BTC. CryptoSlate’s analysis leans on market data to stress-test that story.
CoinGlass’ semiannual derivatives outlook shows Bitcoin soaking up institutional and ETF-driven demand through the first half of 2025. BTC ETF assets climbed above $130 billion. CME open interest hit fresh highs, while BTC dominance pushed into the mid‑60% range.*
Altcoins told a different story. CoinGlass data highlights Ethereum dropping more than 60% from its early‑2025 high to an April low under $1,400 before a shallow recovery. Major L1s, including Solana and ADA, suffered drawdowns of 60% or more from local peaks, with many smaller names down over 90%.*
Those moves line up with a broader risk-off shift rather than a single political headline. Spot Bitcoin ETFs gave institutions an easy, compliant trade. Regulators still have not clarified which altcoins can sit inside exchange-traded products, and custody rules remain patchy outside BTC and, to a lesser extent, ETH.
Hoskinson is accurate that altcoins underperformed and that Washington drama added headline risk. The data points to structural drivers that started before TRUMP minted and will outlast it.
Where the politics and the token sit now
TRUMP now trades just above $5 on major venues like Kraken and Bitget, according to CoinGecko. That puts the token down more than 90% from its launch frenzy, even as Trump-linked entities still control roughly 80% of supply.
ADA, meanwhile, sits below $0.40 and nearly 90% off its 2021 all-time high, per CoinMarketCap. That is the backdrop for Hoskinson’s frustration with a cycle that rewarded Bitcoin ETF flows and punished most L1s.
On Capitol Hill, the House has already delivered what the industry wanted on paper. Lawmakers sent the GENIUS stablecoin bill to Trump with a 308–122 vote and passed CLARITY with 294–134 backing. The Senate now controls the calendar for CLARITY, with Banking and Agriculture leaders juggling that bill against their own frameworks.**
Hoskinson’s warning lands in that gap. The industry spent two years building a bipartisan opening. TRUMP’s memecoin and the Trump family’s wider crypto ventures gave opponents clean attack lines on corruption. The price action and the legislative file both show damage from that choice. They do not yet show the kind of killed-on-arrival Senate math implied by a “lost 70-vote supermajority.”
