Cardano Banks on Midnight
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Playing By Different Rules
Leaders of crypto platforms are duty-bound to talk up their own products.
In a highly volatile market where every word is closely scrutinised, it is important to put a positive spin on updates and insights.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is a master of the art, as reflected by his recent response on the value of Midnight, the data protection-focused sidechain developed for Cardano’s ecosystem.
Through a simple GIF, Hoskinson has made his beliefs clear that privacy-first systems like Midnight are playing by different rules to change how finance works.
Monument Meets Midnight
Hoskinson weighed into a discussion that emanated from the Midnight Foundation, the organisation supporting the growth, development, and decentralisation of the Midnight Network, partnering with the UK’s Monument Bank [https://www.monument.co].
In a first for a UK-regulated bank, Monument can now establish traditional savings instruments on-chain without losing safeguards like regulatory compliance and deposit insurance.
A prominent Cardano Stake Pool Operator (SPO) suggested the partnership highlighted the huge difference between the UK and US approach to digital-asset yields.
The SPO took to X to point out that that in the US, stablecoins with no privacy are losing yield to banks. Meanwhile in the UK “banks are putting the bank account and yield (both with privacy) directly on-chain”.
Hoskinson joined the conversation by posting a GIF of comedian Steve Harvey uttering the words, “I’m just saying”.
The entrepreneur has made no secret of his disapproval of US crypto regulators.
He has repeatedly accused them of favouring Wall Street institutions over decentralised finance and retail investors, even calling for the resignations of key US officials.
Pushing Narrative to Lift ADA
Hoskinson also hailed the Midnight-Monument partnership as one of the largest deals Cardano has ever done in his own post on X.
He posited that it could bring “hundreds of millions to billions of TVL (total value locked) to the Midnight ecosystem”.
Some analysts have suggested that Hoskinson is banking on Midnight-linked deals to lift up the Cardano price USD rate, where the platform’s native ADA token is struggling.
They may be right, too.
Since September 2025, Hoskinson has been pushing the Midnight narrative extensively, positioning it as the privacy answer the finance world has been waiting for.
Regulated Privacy Solution
While Midnight’s architecture might be difficult for non-crypto players to grasp, what the sidechain essentially does is allow users to prove they are compliant with financial regulations without having to expose sensitive data.
Why this is so significant is because financial regulators the world over are cracking down on money-laundering and have banned digital asset service providers from hosting accounts that use coins that enhance anonymity.
However, with the backing of institutions like Monument Bank, platforms such as Midnight have found a way to deliver a regulated, privacy-focused product.
Institutions Catch On
Whether that product will be worth the “hundreds of millions to billions” Hoskinson talks about remains to be seen.
That said, the penny certainly seems to have dropped for institutions that the Midnight model is one worth looking into, at the very least.