While the proposal has sparked plenty of excitement about potential yield and growth opportunities, not everyone in the community is thrilled.
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano (ADA), recently sat down for an interview with media personality David Gokhshtein, where he shared some candid insights about the network’s massive, but currently idle, treasury. “Cardano has a treasury,” he said.
It has 1.7 billion ADA sitting in that treasury on any given Sunday. Depending on the price of ADA, that’s usually more than a billion dollars. At the all-time high, it was $5 billion. So that is a passive, unmanaged, single-asset, non-yield-bearing treasury, meaning it just sits there like a dragon on a big pile of gold, doing nothing.
That image of untapped potential is what inspired Hoskinson’s proposal: converting 140 million ADA (roughly $100 million) into Cardano-native stablecoins like USDM, USDA, and iUSD. But this isn’t just about moving money around. Hoskinson wants to generate yield between 5-10% annually on those stablecoins and Bitcoin holdings, and then recycle those profits back into buying ADA.
This is simply creating a self-reinforcing treasury growth loop that will not only improve liquidity for ADA but also attract external investors and create long-term sustainability.
Cardano is taking a bold step to fix one of its biggest DeFi hurdles: low stablecoin liquidity. During one of his regular AMAs, Charles Hoskinson pointed out that Cardano’s stablecoin market cap to total DeFi TVL ratio sits at just 9.65%, compared to Ethereum’s 195% and Solana’s 125%. It’s a major gap that’s been holding the ecosystem back.
Currently, Cardano’s Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi is approximately $262.81 million, whereas the combined market cap of its stablecoins is $31.35 million.
Of course, the plan still needs to go through Cardano’s governance process, including review by Intersect, the newly established decision-making body. And while Hoskinson is driving the idea with conviction, not everyone in the Cardano Foundation is fully aligned yet. One X user stated, “Yeah, that’s just not the most optimal usage of treasury funds.”
Still, Cardano is making quiet moves in the background. It was recently integrated into the beta version of Brave Wallet, gaining exposure to over 88 million monthly users. The integration allows users to send, receive, and swap ADA directly within the browser, potentially opening the door for mainstream adoption.
And in another development, Ford Motor Company has entered into a strategic partnership focused on decentralized legal data storage, teaming up with Iagon and Cloud Court to build a proof of concept on the Cardano blockchain. As CNF reported, this will involve storing encrypted data off-chain while using on-chain mechanisms for permissions, verifiability, and access tracking.
At the time of writing, ADA is trading at $0.60 after a 0.4% daily increase and a 5.19% drop in the past week. Analysts believe these developments and the approval of a Cardano Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) could spark a strong rally, possibly pushing ADA toward $1.
