On Tuesday (September 6), Charles Hoskinson, Co-Founder and CEO of IOG, the blockchain technology company responsible for Cardano’s R&D, offered some powerful encouraging words to $ADA HODLers.

Yesterday, as usual, the U.S. stock market and crypto markets around the world reacted badly to news about strong U.S. economic data that suggested that the Fed’s current hawkish stance is warranted.

As CNBC reported, yesterday (September 6), “the Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing PMI figure for August came in better-than-expected at 56.9, rising month over month,” which “could be a sign that the Fed will have more room to hike rates without the U.S. economy falling into a recession.”

This caused Bitcoin to drop below the $19,000 level, and the altcoins followed Bitcoin’s lead and dropped to lower price levels.

According to data from TradingView, on crypto exchange Bitstamp, currently (i.e. as of 8:23 a.m. UTC on September 7), ADA-USD is trading around $0.4640, which is not that far from its summer low of $0.4306 (reached on July 13).

This prompted the IOG CEO to take to Twitter to explain why the crypto market is not reflecting the excellent state that Cardano and some other good crypto projects are in:

One of those areas that IOG is focused on micro finance. As TechCrunch reported on August 30, recently, IOG invested in Kenyan fintech Pezesha.

Hoskinson said in a statement:

“Facilitating the movement of capital into emerging markets to support economic growth and job creation is a core promise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Our vision is centered on using technology to make it easier for people across the globe to borrow and lend to each other in a regulated way. This investment in Pezesha is an important milestone, and we’re excited to be a part of their growth story.”

IOG is collaborating with Pezesha to “build a peer-to-peer financial operating system for Africa.”

As for the highly anticipated Vasil upgrade, which is comming to the Cardano mainnet on September 22, IOG provided this update on ecosystem readiness for Vasil: