Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says he was 'blindsided' by eToro's decision to delist ada for US customers

• Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said he'd been "blindsided" by eToro's delisting of ada for US users.
• Hoskinson said there were no regulatory events or subpoenas, threats or lawsuits that they were aware of.
• eToro said it planned to delist ada for US customers by the year end because of regulatory concerns.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson told followers this week on Twitter that eToro's decision to delist the ada token for US customers had come as a complete surprise to him.

eToro, an online trading platform based in Israel, said on Tuesday it would delist ada, along with the TRON Foundation's trx token for customers in the United States by December 26. eToro first added ada to its crypto offering in 2018. The exchange told Insider the rapidly shifting regulatory landscape was behind its decision to limit the ability of US customers to open new positions in the two digital currencies.

Many critics have argued that the regulatory landscape in the US for crypto is not clear yet but officials do believe that regulation is necessary and more policies are set to be put in place by 2022.

Hoskinson, who founded cardano in 2015, said that he still needed further clarification on the trading platform's decision to delist ada for US customers.

"There's currently nothing we've received, no regulatory event, no subpoena, nothing from any regulatory agency, no threats of lawsuits, none of these things, that's why we're so blindsided by it, because actually, the trend has been over the last six months a significant increase of liquidity on cardano," Hoskinson said.

"On our side, we had no indication of this from eToro and it's rather unfortunate that nothing was sent our way," he said.

The decision knocked almost 4.8% off the value of the ada token and sent it to three-month lows, while trx fell 5% to a one-month low on Wednesday,

But ada has still been one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies of 2021. It's gained around 850% so far this year, which has made it the world's sixth largest digital token by market value, according to Coinmarketcap. It's fallen short of the 14,000% gain in rival solana's sol token this year, but has roundly beaten bitcoin's 102% rally.

It's a smaller competitor to the ethereum network, thanks to its capability of hosting smart contracts and other applications that are key to decentralized finance.

Cardano's ada has been listed by some of the biggest exchanges. It was listed on Coinbase on March 19 this year and on Binance in 2017, and Kraken listed it in 2018. Bitstamp decided to list ada last Thursday. The altcoin is not listed on Gemini yet.

"We at least could have better understood the reasons and we'll of course reach out on our side to better understand reasons but it's primarily the foundation's responsibility," Hoskinson said, referring to the Cardano Foundation, a non-profit organization in Switzerland that is the custodian of the Cardano brand.

While eToro's decision came as a surprise, Hoskinson was ultimately sanguine.

It doesn't surprise me from the perspective of these things happen. Everybody has a different compliance desk. Everybody has a different regulatory tolerance. Everybody has a different customer base," he said.