Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson launches privacy blockchain Midnight with $250 million tokenized deposit deal from UK bank Monument and partnerships with Google Cloud, MoneyGram, and Vodafone

Hoskinson secured $250 million in tokenized deposits at launch for Midnight from UK bank Monument. Fahmy Syed, who formed over 100 partnerships in nine months at the Midnight Foundation, closed the deal. The partnership creates a direct path to syndicate similar deals with U.S. and European financial institutions and the Bank of England.

Midnight uses two tokens with different properties: Knight is public, tradable on exchanges, and controls governance; Dust is private, non-transferable, consumptive, and not listed on exchanges. The platform combines privacy, chain abstraction (a system that works across multiple blockchains), and smart compliance, and uses zero-knowledge proofs to let users prove facts without revealing underlying data.

Midnight is designed as a privacy system for AI agents (autonomous software that performs tasks without manual intervention). Knight holders earn rewards when Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana users pay transaction fees to use Midnight. Midnight will likely be the first privacy coin listed in Japan and South Korea.