Charles Hoskinson responds to criticism over Cardano’s Coinfirm partnership

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has responded to criticism over the Cardano Foundation’s partnership with Coinfirm, saying it was necessary for the adoption of ADA.

The Cardano Foundation announced its partnership with the blockchain analytics provider on Tuesday, which will see Coinfirm’s analytics being utilized to ensure compliance with frameworks such as the 6th Anti-Money Laundering Directive and Financial Action Task Force’s guidelines.

“The tools and services provided by Coinfirm enables every exchange, custodian, and all other third-parties to clearly track the history of ADA held in their wallet,” the announcement read.

Not everyone welcomed the move, however. On Thursday, Weiss Crypto, the subsidiary of financial ratings firm Weiss Ratings, criticized it vociferously via a thread on Twitter, describing it as a “bad move all-around”:

“The excessive regulation is how the banking system was choked to death. With this announcement, it would seem ADA is proudly announcing they want to follow in their footsteps.”

Weiss Crypto appeared to be quite irritated with Cardano’s move toward regulatory compliance as it asserted that it is now “closer to becoming a censorship-prone, politicized, and manipulated network.”

“If you’re going down this route, there are far better tools for the job — Facebook’s Diem, CBDCs and the networks they’ll spring up,” the post read.

4/ The whole point is to build a new financial and economic layer, free from the control and repression of those who have brought our world economy to the brink of total failure, able to be sustained only by excessive and aggressive centrally planned intervention.

— Weiss Crypto (@WeissCrypto) August 25, 2021

Weiss Crypto went on to suggest that if some crypto projects or decentralized networks worked toward regulatory compliance, it would “only guarantee your demise.”

The Ethereum co-founder and Cardano creator responded with a video message in the thread and emphasized that “the point and the purpose has always been building in layers, building modules, building ecosystems” that enable compliance with local regulations.

“So while the base layer of the system doesn’t care if you’re from the United States or China, Japan, wherever, what you can do is add identity and metadata and all kinds of other things, and those other things give you the ability to be in compliance with your business domain, regulated or otherwise,” he said.

Related: Number of Cardano millionaires rises by 173% after ADA price hits new highs

“And that’s the reason these partnerships are important. They provide clarity. They provide a lot of business and technical requirements, and they allow us to make the software better for everyone everywhere, and Cardano to get more adoption in all industries, regulated and unregulated,” Hoskinson concluded.

So @WeissCrypto thinks that #Cardano devs and ALL of it's users should just go underground and become fugitives from law enforcement. Yes, AML laws are outdated to solve the problems of tomorrow, but funny how some in crypto think that they are untouchable and above the law.

— Dave Dionisio (@Dave_USA01) August 26, 2021

Amid the anticipation of Cardano smart contracts, which are slated to launch on Sept. 12, the price of ADA has surged 99% over the past 30 days, increasing from $1.27 on July 27 to sit at around $2.53 at the time of writing.