5000%. 50x From $4 million to $200 million. That’s how much the market cap of Bittensor’s subnets increased in the last 2 months.
Yet, in that same 2 months, Bittensor’s native $TAO is flat. But make no mistake. Bittensor has been crushing lately and is on a huge recent pump of more than 50%. And up more than 10x over the last 2 years. Will this growth continue? We think it will. And here’s why.
Brief Intro to Bittensor
Bittensor and its $TAO token are in 2 of the biggest, fastest-growing sectors in the world. AI and Machine Learning. Bittensor’s own stated goal is to be the Bitcoin of AI. They have 21 million TAO, like Bitcoin. They have reward halvings, also like Bitcoin.
The next halving will take place sometime in Q3 or early Q4 of this year. Unlike Bitcoin, there’s some variation in how fast new TAO are circulated. That’s why we don’t know an exact date but a range of dates. The current supply is 8.6 million, and the halving will take place when the supply gets to 10.5 million. Bitcoin’s halving is by block number, while Bittensor’s is by circulating supply.
Bittensor wants to be THE home for decentralized AI and machine learning apps and protocols. They use subnets for this. It can get complicated, but think of it like the parachain model for Polkadot or the Map of Zones model for Cosmos. All intertwined but using shared technology and infrastructure.
But with one main difference. Every subnet HAS to have $TAO. Has to buy it, store it, and use it to pay for its subnet. So it’s like the DOT and ATOM ecosystems, but better. Plus, all the prices for each subnet are in TAO. So you don’t have projects like Noble or Injective issuing their tokens that could take value away from the native chain token. This alone makes $TAO incredibly valuable.
TAO’s main chain is called the Root. And the value of all the subnets right now is approaching the value of the Root chain. So imagine if Polkadot’s value came from not just its value, but from the value of EVERY parachain, too. That’s what you get with TAO.
Dont feel bad if you’re only staked in Root and havent made a decision to own any dTAO subnet tokens.
Unlike $ETH or L1’s, $TAO‘s value isnt diluted by the success of its subbies.
As long as dTAO is only exchangeable into TAO, the value SN’s produce gets funneled back into it!…
— Neural Bond Connery(τ, τ) (@ai_bond_connery) April 23, 2025
Why It’s Pumping
AI and subnets. That’s the short answer to why Bittensor is pumping. We know the AI market all over the world is booming. And as a crypto sector, too. It combined with the AI Agents sector is almost a $30 billion market. Plus, it’s one of the fastest-growing. So Bittensor is in the right place. But others are too and aren’t pumping as much. Why?
The subnets. Bittensors subnets are each their chain tackling a specific AI or machine learning issue. Some do computing power. Others do:
- AI for training purposes.
- Decentralized research.
- AI for trading.
- Data management for huge machine learning projects.
There are lots of different needs for decentralized AI. And many solutions aare vailable among Bittensor’s over 100 subnets. Even Deepseek’s model is here on a couple of subnets completely for free.
$TAO – @deepseek_ai has now been integrated within Bittensor.
As @BarrySilbert‘s quoted; “Bittensor $TAO is going to eat the AI world”. pic.twitter.com/jM4GrPoB5c
— Tseu Tseu – τao (@tseutseutao) January 27, 2025
Yet, you are still early. Look at the number of holders of the most popular subnets.
How To Play The Pump
There are only 3 approaches if you are interested in Bittensor as an investment. The more conservative option is to buy Bittensor’s $TAO and just hold it. You can stake it and earn 15 %+ for it. But it’s the most conservative option because the subnets are all so small. Every subnet falls into the high-risk/high-reward category.
And all their revenue and subnet token prices are in $TAO. So only a couple of the more than 100 subnets need to be successful for the $TAO price to go parabolic. That’s even if most other subnets are not successful. Then the most aggressive option is to assign your $TAO entirely into the subnets, figuring that if a couple of pops, then it makes up for the losses. That definitely could, and most likely will happen.
Last, we have the hybrid approach. Hold some in $TAO, and assign some to the subnets at whatever risk/reward ratio works for you. We recommend, for many reasons, that you hold most in $TAO and keep it conservative. Yet some for investing in subnets makes sense with small amounts, and if you choose wisely.
But there are risks. Both due to the subnets’ small sizes, and other risks too. So now, we will look at those. Can they kill the pump? Let’s see. What do you think? Leave a comment below with your opinion on Bittensor.
Project Risks: Will They Kill the Pump?
There are 3 main risks to Bittensor here. That’s not including some black swan event like a huge hack of a Treasury wallet or something. Here are the big 3 risks.
- Adoption and Centralized AI Models
As we saw with social media, centralized models won in a big way. And it’s been a disaster for privacy, data ownership and access, and independence, among other things. There is a dedicated group of people in AI fighting hard to ensure there are great, viable decentralized options so this does not happen again. This time, instead of Meta and Google, it’s Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI. Decentralized models grow more slowly most of the time. But adoption of TAO and its subnets is growing fast. We expect that to continue.
You give them your data.
They give you a black box.
You get logged, profiled, and watched.
They get control.
This isn’t open-source AI.
It’s digital feudalism.
There’s a better way
— THINK (@thinkagents) April 17, 2025
- Market
This one we’ve already seen. Trump tariffs and other macroeconomic policies affect our markets now just like any other market around the world. And while we can’t do anything about that, we can position ourselves to benefit if markets do shift. One nice thing about AI is that its impact will only grow, no matter what the S&P 500 or Hang Seng Indexes do.
Just in the past *8 hours* alone:
– Reduction to 50% tariffs on China
– Then White House said never mind, back to 145%
– Auto tariff exemptions
– Then White House said never mind, might even go higher than before
You think ANY CFO is going to sign off on a CapEx project in…
— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) April 23, 2025
- Technical
This last one, the technical risks, cannot be shooed away just because the project is hard to understand. But it means even developers and subnet teams could have a tough time scaling and growing. It’s especially true because the ecosystem has grown so fast. Subnet growth is over 5000% in the last 12 months. So will these risks kill the pump? We don’t think so. Centralized AI models and systems will likely grow faster than decentralized ones.
That’s to be expected. But we already have a fully developed model with Deepseek that is open source and available on TAO subnets. More are on the way. Decentralized storage solutions like Walrus can now store those models, so we aren’t stuck with centralized cloud operators. All this is good. Add how AI is a clear leading sector in a bull market, and we expect the Bittensor pump to continue.
Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment, and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to the accepted risk tolerance levels of the writer/reviewers, and their risk tolerance may differ from yours. We are not responsible for any losses you may incur due to any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments, so please do your due diligence. Copyright Altcoin Buzz Pte Ltd.
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