Charles Hoskinson Says Crypto Is Entering a New Era of Exponential Growth

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has said cryptocurrency is entering a period of rapid technological growth, comparing the development of blockchain with earlier advances in nuclear technology, the internet and artificial intelligence.

Speaking at the United Nations, Hoskinson explained that exponential technologies can appear to develop slowly at first before their impact increases much faster.

“Exponential technologies are counterintuitive in that very little does something, a little bit more does everything,” Hoskinson said.

Hoskinson Compares Crypto With the Internet

Hoskinson said the internet was another major example of exponential technology because it changed how quickly people could communicate and access information.

He noted that communication once depended heavily on physical distance and could take months in some cases. The internet later made global communication almost immediate.

“The internet comes around. It’s our next exponential technology, computing and the internet,” he said.

The same type of change is now taking place with artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.

AI Is Becoming More Accessible

Cardano founder also pointed to developments in artificial intelligence as another example of rapid technological progress. He said AI models are becoming more efficient, allowing increasingly capable systems to run with fewer computing resources.

He cited improvements in model efficiency as an indication that advanced AI could become more widely available rather than remaining limited to large data centers.

“Intelligence is basically becoming ubiquitous and universal,” Hoskinson said.

Tokenization Is Growing in Financial Markets

Hoskinson also discussed the increasing use of blockchain technology to represent traditional assets on-chain. Tokenization can be used for assets such as equities, currencies and real estate. Blockchain-based systems can also allow transactions to settle more quickly than some traditional financial infrastructure.

The tokenized equity data showed growth from roughly $600 million at the beginning of 2025 to about $3 billion. The increase comes as financial institutions explore blockchain-based settlement, tokenized assets and digital forms of money.

Exponential Growth Can Be Hard to Predict

Hoskinson said it can be difficult to predict how quickly a new technology will grow by looking only at its early progress.

He gave renewable energy in Germany as an example. Renewables were once expected to provide no more than 4% of the country’s electricity. By 2025, they were supplying 55.9%.

His point was that technologies can grow much faster than early estimates suggest, especially as adoption and efficiency improve.