Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says Midnight’s push into traditional finance is only getting started as U.K.-regulated Monument Bank moves closer to bringing as much as £250 million in retail customer deposits onto the privacy-focused blockchain.
In response to a post saying the Monument Bank integration could go live “in days,”, Hoskinson declared:
“This is just the beginning. All the assets of the world want some $NIGHT Mode.”
His remark points to a broader ambition for Midnight: to become privacy infrastructure for regulated real-world assets beyond crypto-native applications.
Monument and the Midnight Foundation first announced the project in March, making the bank the first U.K.-regulated lender planning to tokenize retail deposits on a public blockchain. The initial phase targets up to £250 million in customer deposits.
Monument Bank Plans to Bring Retail Deposits On-Chain
The initiative differs substantially from issuing an independent stablecoin.
Each tokenized deposit will represent one pound held at Monument Bank, on a one-to-one basis. The deposits are intended to continue earning interest, remain redeemable in pounds sterling and retain applicable Financial Services Compensation Scheme protections.
Monument manages approximately £7 billion in deposits, so the planned £250 million rollout represents only an initial portion of its wider deposit base.
The first phase aims to establish tokenized bank deposits on Midnight. Later phases envision giving customers access to tokenized real-world assets, including private equity, commodity funds and structured products, through Monument’s existing banking interface.
This follows earlier comments from Hoskinson that banks and insurance companies were already exploring real-world assets on Midnight.
November Launch Followed Earlier Delay
The Monument rollout was initially expected earlier in 2026, but encountered a custody bottleneck.
In September, Monument founder Mintoo Bhandari said the project had been delayed as the bank looked for a custodian able to meet regulatory requirements and support Midnight’s zero-knowledge infrastructure. At the time, Bhandari indicated that a retail rollout was expected around November 2026.
The latest “in days” timeline came from the Cardano/Midnight community, after Monument and Midnight Foundation representatives appeared together at the Digital Asset Summit in London.
Hoskinson responded directly to the post with his “just the beginning” comment.
However, Monument Bank and the Midnight Foundation have not publicly confirmed the exact “in days” launch date in the official material reviewed. Accordingly, the £250 million should be understood as the first-phase target, not as confirmation that £250 million has already moved on-chain.
Why Hoskinson Says the World’s Assets Want “$NIGHT Mode”
Hoskinson’s reference to “$NIGHT Mode” connects the Monument project to Midnight’s central proposition: enabling institutions to use public blockchain infrastructure without exposing sensitive financial information.
Midnight combines programmable privacy with selective disclosure using zero-knowledge technology. This allows transactions to meet audit and compliance requirements while protecting private data.
Its economic system has two components.
$NIGHT is the network’s native governance and utility token. Holding $NIGHT generates DUST, a non-transferable resource used to execute transactions and smart contracts on Midnight.
This architecture is intended to make costs more predictable for institutions, since $NIGHT itself does not need to be spent on each transaction.
Hoskinson has increasingly portrayed Midnight as a major way to bring external users and assets into the broader Cardano ecosystem. He recently said every $NIGHT holder is already a Cardano user and argued that Midnight represents the kind of project Cardano was originally built to support.
$NIGHT Jumps as Midnight Expansion Continues
According to CoinMarketCap, $NIGHT is trading around $0.048, up approximately 13.7% over the past 24 hours. Its circulating market capitalization is close to $795 million, and approximately 16.6 billion $NIGHT are currently in circulation.
Midnight’s valuation remains well below Cardano’s, although Hoskinson has said $NIGHT could eventually surpass ADA by market capitalization. The Crypto Basic recently calculated that $NIGHT would need to reach roughly $0.40 to match Cardano’s market cap at the time, assuming the same circulating supply.
The Monument integration does not guarantee further $NIGHT price appreciation. However, it offers a real-world test of Midnight’s underlying thesis: whether regulated financial institutions can move conventional assets onto public blockchain infrastructure while maintaining the privacy and compliance standards required by traditional banking.
If the initial £250 million phase succeeds, Monument’s longer-term plan could expand beyond tokenized deposits to investment products and lending, lending more weight to Hoskinson’s claim that this is only the beginning.
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