Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has officially denied rumors suggesting that Elon Musk’s recent interview with former President Donald Trump took place at his Wyoming ranch. The crypto community was in a frenzy of speculation following Musk’s hints about the location of the high-profile interview.

On Monday, Tesla CEO and X CTO Elon Musk conducted an interview with GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. Notably, the interview on X Spaces did not touch on crypto-related topics. But before the interview, Musk teased his followers by sharing a photo of himself at a friend’s ranch in Wyoming. He revealed, “Doing the Donald Trump Space at my friend’s ranch in Wyoming.”

Cardano Founder Is Just Joking

Speculation quickly mounted within the Cardano community, fueled by Musk’s vague description and a timely compliment from Hoskinson about the atmosphere at the ranch, leading many to wonder if the two tech moguls were building a deeper business relationship. Hoskinson responded to Musk’s post, saying: “Nice ranch. Like the woodwork. The guy has good taste.”

This interaction led followers, including Rick McCracken, a well-known figure in the Cardano ecosystem, to speculate about the location, implying that it could be Hoskinson’s property. McCracken commented, “What kind of wood did you use for your interior, Charles?” Hoskinson ambiguously replied that the wood was “locally sourced,” which only led to further speculation.

However, the rumor mill was put to rest when Hoskinson clarified the situation via X, saying, “Okay, we all had a lot of fun. Musk flew to Jackson and went to Peter Thiel’s house. My ranch is in Wheatland.” This confirmation redirected the narrative and emphasized the informal nature of Hoskinson’s initial comments.

The backdrop to these rumors includes previous attempts by Hoskinson to get involved in Musk’s ventures, most notably addressing bot issues at X. During a conversation with Tony Edwards on the Thinking Crypto podcast in mid-June, Hoskinson expressed frustration over the lack of response to his outreach efforts.

“We’ve reached out to different people at X multiple times and even offered to do free work with verified tweets or other things, just because it’s so bad right now with bots and this kind of stuff, and it’s just always quiet,” he shared.

Despite Hoskinson’s personal connections to Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother, he confirmed that there was never any conversation about Cardano or potential collaborations. “I even know Kimbal Musk and I’ve talked to him multiple times (…) never once did (Elon) mention Cardano or me or anything like that,” he noted, dashing any remaining hopes within the community for an imminent collaboration.

So the new speculation had a very slim chance of being true from the start. Davide Lucchesi, an indie game developer and team member of the European Cardano Community, noted: “It would have been the weirdest thing: that guy would never respond to any of your posts and comments, not even when offered free coding help.”

At the time of going to press, ADA was trading at $0.3359.

Main image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com