Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson tops Zuckerberg and Kardashian in private jet pollution

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson’s private jet is ranked among the top 15 biggest polluters in the US, according to Climate Jets, a website that tracks the estimated emissions from private jets owned by the ultra-rich.

Hoskinson’s private jet emissions exceed those of billionaires and Hollywood celebrities including Mark Zuckerberg, Ken Griffin, and Kim Kardashian.

In 2022, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson’s private jet logged 562 hours in the air, spanning a distance of 283,434 miles — equivalent to a little more than the distance to the moon.

The jet emitted around 2,895 metric tons of carbon dioxide, surpassing the yearly emissions of 186 average Americans. Its routes prominently featured Denver, Los Angeles, and New York City, along with international destinations ranging from Dubai to Korea.

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In response to criticism about his ranking as a top jet polluter, Charles Hoskinson said that it is not just personal use — but a lot of business.

He said in a video last month that most who own a “sufficiently good aircraft” will often work with a third-party company to charter that aircraft to private clients.

“That’s exactly what I do,” he said.

Hoskinson also listed his jet-set clientele, which includes rock band Metallica and Hollywood heavyweight, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

“It’s a great networking tool,” he added.

Hoskinson’s open promotion of his clientele is unusual in private aviation where confidentiality is key, according to Tertius van Jaarsveld, CEO of Dubai-based private charter flights company UFlyGlobal.

“Private aviation clients are very private and would seldom tell us what they do for a living,” van Jaarsveld told DL News. ”It is not only because of privacy that they will use private jets for transport, but it ranks amongst the main reasons.”

“It is just not appropriate to name people like that,” van Jaarsveld said.

But, he said, “aircraft management” in the way Hoskinson explains is common in the industry. van Jaarsveld added that “the list is nonsense and should be expanded to include emissions by the airlines too.”

“That being said, the whole aviation community, private and commercial, only contributes 2% of the total carbon emissions in the world,” van Jaarsveld told DL News. “Aviation is by far the most active in developing technology to further reduce carbon emissions by aircraft and has set a target to be net zero by 2050.”

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Just two years prior, Hoskinson used to fly commercially, which makes his rapid rise in ranking remarkable.

“I’ll only fly private when I find out how to make more money doing it than I’d spend. I think I’ve almost cracked that code,” he said at the time.

Hoskinson has built his wealth in crypto over the past decade.

Although he was one of Ethereum’s eight co-founders, he left the project as early as 2014. Ethereum’s main co-founder Vitalik Buterin sought a non-profit, open-source model, while Hoskinson aimed for a venture-backed, for-profit approach.

His success came soon after leaving Ethereum. In 2015, Hoskinson founded IOHK, or Input Output Hong Kong, a private company that developed the Cardano blockchain.

Cardano is the 15th-largest blockchain by total value locked, a metric for investor deposits in DeFi.

In addition to blockchain development and private jet side business, Hoskinson also runs a ranch in Wyoming. He said that the ranch contributes even more to pollution.

“My personal consumption’s probably pretty high, not just because I have a jet, but I also have a large ranch in Wyoming which has 500 bison on it,” Hoskinson said in that video.

Updated on June 6 to improve clarity in the bullet points. Updated on June 17 with “a little more than the distance to the moon”.