Bittensor is outperforming.
On Friday, the crypto market suffered its worst leverage wipeout ever, driving Bitcoin down 12% as most smaller cryptocurrencies suffered more severe losses.
Bittensor’s TAO is among a handful of tokens to register a weekly gain despite the volatility, soaring 32% over the past seven days.
“Institutional momentum is creating a lot of market interest and awareness in Bittensor,” Arrash Yasavolian, founder of Taoshi, a firm focused on leveraging the Bittensor blockchain, told DL News.
Institutional uptick
On October 10, Grayscale, a New York-based crypto asset manager, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a Bittensor Trust, a product that allows investors to gain exposure to the TAO token without directly owning it.
The day before, Barry Silbert, founder of Grayscale owner Digital Currency Group, also announced a new asset management firm that will invest in AI infrastructure projects created on Bittensor.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see other institutional funds preparing launches around TAO, which might also be creating the anticipation and momentum that drives the market further forward,” Yasavolian said.
Bittensor is a blockchain network designed to offer an alternative to centrally controlled artificial intelligence powerhouses like OpenAI and Google.
The network enables anyone to contribute their computing power to AI applications, known as subnets.
In return, those users are rewarded with valuable TAO tokens, similar to how the Bitcoin blockchain rewards those who process transactions with new Bitcoins.
‘Commercial traction’
According to Karia Samaroo, founder of xTAO, a crypto treasury company focused on accumulating TAO tokens, growing traction among Bittensor’s many subnets is also spurring investor interest.
“There’s now meaningful commercial traction within the network itself,” he told DL News. “Several consumer-facing products are already running on Bittensor, and the top three subnets collectively generate more than $20 million in annual recurring revenue.”
DL News could not independently verify the $20 million figure.
Among the biggest subnets are Chutes AI, an AI compute platform that lets developers deploy and scale AI models. It is on track to bring in $2.4 million in revenue over the coming year, according to data provided by the subnet.
Targon Compute, a confidential compute and verification platform, will make $10.4 million annually, according to Seth Bloomberg, an investment partner at Bittensor venture firm Unsupervised Capital.
Some subnets are giving mainstream AI products a run for their money, according to Yasavolian.
Ridges, a subnet that provides a marketplace for autonomous software engineering agents, achieved 73% accuracy on benchmark coding tests, coming close to the 74% score achieved by Anthropic’s Claude 4.1 model.
First halving
Investors are also increasingly looking at Bittensor ahead of key network events.
“The most significant upcoming milestone is the first halving, expected around December 2025, which will reduce daily TAO issuance by half,” Samaroo said.
Samaroo is referring to the automatic halving of TAO rewards issued by the Bittensor network.
Like the Bitcoin blockchain, Bittensor is programmed to halve TAO token rewards approximately every four years. Unlike Bitcoin, which halves based on block count, Bittensor’s halving is triggered by the total supply of TAO tokens.
The halving could be a double-edged sword, however.
The decrease in rewards for network contributors may disincentivise some of them as their payouts decrease.
“As this will be the first Bittensor halving, we really don’t know how it will play out,” Yasavolian said. “In general, halvings bode well for long-term performance.”
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
