I don't trust Charles Hoskinson even a little because he is a snake-oil salesman and a self-promoter and a little unstable and he mainly wants to engage to pimp his own brand.

But he did work on Bitshares in the early days, he does have connection to a POS researcher out of Edinburgh, he was briefly involved in Ethereum before the crowdsale (he got fired for being shady or unreliable ), and he does insert himself into these things, when he isn't speaking at every and any conference that will give him airtime.