CrypτoBecu

τ

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

The greatest mistake in crypto isn't bad timing. It's touching a position you should have held forever.

In this episode of The Journeyman, I lay out how I invest in crypto and the rules I wish I'd followed from day one. As ever, please enjoy!

[WIZZ🥷 ( beware scammers ) @CryptoWizardd]

$TAO future top #5 project on cmc

[siamkidd @SiamKidd]

A week on from @proofoftalk in Paris and catching up with pretty much everyone that operates in Bittensor, I've managed to digest all the vibes and info from all the conversations I had. As well as recover from an almighty 2 day hangover from the last night!

As usual, I'm going to focus on the changes/issues Bittensor has (as I care about it and want it to improve). Then will talk about the positives.

The following issues are felt by the majority of subnet owners:

1.) Sneak changes. There are patches and changes to the chain every week at the moment. And often every month. All done without a roadmap or forewarning. This is really jarring for investors, institutions and subnet owners to forward plan. This is the main reason big money is tentatively waiting to plough in. It WANTS to, but not until the eco is more stable and predictable! As an eco, let's just have all the changes every 6 months. That way people can plan, there's some expected stability, for at least 6 months and then we all know of the changes and can prepare in advance. Or even have a proper debate about it.

2.) Knee jerk changes. Again, the general consensus is that the powers that be are over-indexing on trying to stamp out the few malicious subnets out there, but the changes do affect and will hurt many other legitimate subnets. For example, there's been a lot of telegraphing that protocol based shorting will be coming. Pretty much no one wants this! It's just going to give big negative whales to create even more profit and volatility within dTAO. One of the biggest selling points of dTAO is that you can only go long! But with the subnet-takeover-function of Conviction AND shorting, we are literally about to lay down on our backs to open ourselves for a right rogering. Seriously OTF, don't bring on shorting. All sorts of negative attack vectors will be opened up.

3.) Driving value to alpha to negate sell-side. So I've been harking on about this for at least a year now. With root prop and the miner/vali/dTAO sellside vectors, a subnet has a tremendous amount of sell side. Especially if a subnet is trying to do good and NOT have a miner burn. This is why MOST subnets have lengthy down only charts, despite doing good stuff. So in order to avoid the price spiral to dereg, subnet owners absolutely cannot rely on the zero-sum-game/pool of dTAO funds as it's hyper rotational and chases the dopamine of announcements. So the only predictable and controllable way to protect price is to either generate a heap of PROFIT in order to do buybacks OR raise capital in the real world to have a protectionary war chest. Suffice to say, it's pushing subnet owners to do the traditional stuff AI start ups have to do in the real world. Let's change root prop to alleviate some sellside! Instead of having alpha be insta-sold into TAO by the chain, just have a PROTOCOL OWNED Alpha Treasury. Sellside is then reduced quite a lot and the protocol itself will benefit from having a wildly appreciating NAV due to the treasury and APY of all alpha. This gives Bittensor way more value and optionality in the future.

4.) Connecting real world acquisition value to alpha holders. A flawed concern that newbies have of Bittensor is that any subnet that does really well is just going to be acquired or gobbled up by a big fish in the real world. And that is true, to an extent. But if a subnet is going to be gobbled up, alpha holders will have had a glorious ride up until that point as the subnet will have had to be doing great things for a while in order to be on an acquisition radars. Like SN44 is right now. So we dTAO investors effectively get to front run big VC firms. And the Bittensor Miner network is a moat in itself. But the real disconnect here is connecting that liquidity event to the alpha. Conviction doesn't really do that. I still think it's a virtue-signalling sugar cube of pundit-appeasement. But what would be good to see from subnets is some sort of public commitment that in the event of an acquisition, a percentage of the cash-payout is directly ploughed into their alpha as a buyback as a way of thanking alpha holders and creating a liquidity event for their loyalty and support. Here's a clunky example, (and with a bit more brain glucose there's sure to be a finessed version), but let's say there's a $50m acquisition of a subnet. Typical $15m upfront and $35m in earnout/performance based ratchets. Of that $15m cash element, the subnet owner could do a 20% single buyback of alpha of $3m . This would create a mega candle and an opportunity for people to choose to sell and have a nice liquidity event or even stay for the longer ride. But at the very least, it's some sort of acquisition linkage to alpha.

5.) Chain bloat. The chain is very bloated in such a short time of operation. It's one of the reasons we can't just open it up to like 256 or 1000+ slots. For example, Bitcoin has been running for 15+ years and an archival node is only 750-850GB. Ethereum is 10+ years old and it's about 900GB. But Bittensor hit 2TB in under 3 years. It's probably close to 3TB now. Substrate has many benefits and has facilitated in the creation of Bittensor as we know it, but it is terrible for storing stuff. Instead, we could do all the "bloaty/storing stuff" on another chain and keep substrate for the clever stuff. Bit like how Hippius uses another chain. I haven't owned any Kaspa in 3+ years now, but Kaspa would be PERFECT for this. It's the fastest and most efficient settlement layer on the planet and you can literally write and store stuff into the chain. Bittensor literally couldn't bloat up that chain. It's the perfect match... @const_reborn please please have a zoom with the founder of Kaspa @hashdag You two are God level brains...

So...there are some candid personal gripes which many out there feel the same way, based on convos. But now let's focus on the good stuff! The stuff which reaffirms why my whole life is in Bittensor now.

✅ Despite the odd grifter (which you can never stamp out in any eco), the quality of subnets now compared to 12 months ago is remarkably improved! New subnet quality is also improving a lot! Hopefully some of our revenue generating subnets can now start expanding the scale and cadence of buybacks.

✅The level of institutional interest in Bittensor is magnitudes larger than it was last year. Many entities seriously love it...but are just scared to put their first pinky into us due to the rampant unannounced chain changes! Predictable and reliable roadmap please lol @opentensor

✅Some of the blue-chip subnets are becoming truly world class. Not just the tech but also getting their running shoes on from a Product Market Fit and Go To Market perspective.

✅Real world institutional adoption. This is a blood-brain barrier which is crucial to punch through, and thankfully @webuildscore and @TargonCompute have and are doing that. In fact, this is a seminal moment in Bittensor which is going largely unnoticed! The fact that BIG institutions are now accessing, using and promoting AI infrastructure from Bittensor is exactly what we need. @intel working with Targon. @PwC working with Score! @oblong_inc (a NASDAQ listed entity) investing in and teaming up to SELL Manako services to the US! All of these are nuts! And it's just a matter of time before @metanova_labs makes a real drug breakthrough and @jon_durbin or @IOTA_SN9 makes a full completed distributed pre-training run that makes the previous 72b run look small! I keep hearing that 1T is inbound. This will be a watershed moment for Bittensor.

So these are my thoughts in a nutshell. I have a lot more nuanced thoughts about changes etc, but that's for another time. But it's great to see so many serious people STILL in and working ON Bittensor, despite prices looking grim. That's the sign of a real network.

I managed to spend a nice amount of time chatting with @const_reborn and Etienne (CEO of OTF) and they've been getting a bit of flak recently for the changes (this post included), but I have to stress that Jake and Etienne really do have this amazing vision of what Bittensor can and needs to be. And that they'd rather prod the pie now rather than messing with it big time down the line when things are much bigger. Like it's better to build a functional plane on the ground, rather than mid-flight. And I guess everyone is just caught up with the short term volatility of everything. So we as investors need to chill out a bit.

It's a bit like Henry Ford asking the public about the creation and introduction of the automobile when 99% of transport was done by horse. Everyone would have moaned and whined. But look at things now...

I genuinely do believe Jake will pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and we will look back at this turbulent time and chuckle.

Remember:
✨The 1st great network was the internet. A globally scaled network of information transfer.

✨The 2nd great network was the Bitcoin protocol. A globally scaled network of VALUE transfer.

✨The 3rd great network is the Bittensor protocol. A globally scaled network of information, value transfer and intelligence creation.

✨Being able to send money peer to peer has more value than being able to send an email. But being able to create, own and distribute intelligence trumps all.

Hope this helps folks...

[DIEGO VALDEZ @REALDIEGOVALDEZ]

Let me reply to that question.

My answer is that, mentally, the market is still tied to BTC. Part of that is tradition, and part of it is the sense of security BTC provides. Because of that, decoupling isn’t just a price issue; it’s a trust issue.

$TAO may be one of the few projects following a clear and structured path that could eventually lead to a permanent decoupling. People rotate into BTC because they view it as the safest asset in crypto. TAO is slowly moving toward becoming a legitimate alternative for that role.

Now, my adorable 🥰 friend and hero,

Let me spam your messages with something I replied to another person about the price of TAO! 🚀

here I truly believe @markjeffrey is right, and that $TAO gets above $2,000 sooner rather than later.

You also have to account for the halving that happened six months ago. A huge amount of TAO is staked, and a massive amount is locked inside subnets. Because of that, I believe $TAO is still significantly undervalued and not even close to fair value yet.

If you understand market caps, TAO is actually cheaper than SOL, HYPE, XRP, and NEAR. Why? Because price alone doesn’t determine value; market cap does.

Any project above a $4B market cap is already more expensive than TAO. Today, TAO isn’t even at a $3B market cap. On top of that, TAO has a limited supply. Like BTC, only 21 million TAO will ever exist.

I don’t see another asymmetric bet with this level of sustainability. And I specifically say sustainability because TAO sits at the center of AI 🤖, and even more importantly, decentralized AI; which is rapidly becoming one of the most important trends in the industry.

$TAO isn’t great because it’s trying to be better than everyone else. It’s great because its entire design works in its favor: decentralization, scarcity, low market cap, a strong community, a functioning ecosystem, investor rewards, real science, and continuous innovation.

When Mark said TAO could become the #3 crypto, I honestly think he was being respectful to BTC and ETH.

The reward mechanism inside Bittensor allows investors to generate more TAO without buying more TAO, simply by allocating capital intelligently across the subnet economy. Very few ecosystems offer anything remotely similar.

Today, the ecosystem itself has become a marketplace where investors can earn more TAO by participating in subnet growth and trading subnet assets.

For anyone reading this: copy and paste this entire post into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok and ask them if this analysis makes sense.

Do your own research.

My bet is that after you do, you’ll start buying $TAO.

[Rob Greer @rob_svrn]

@Jason like fine wine in napa valley..

if youre in ai in 2026, pivot to bittensor:native

[@jason @Jason]

@rob_svrn TAO ON SALE!

[DonaX₿τ @Donaxbt]

First started mining bitcoin in 2017

Now mining Bittensor

[Gyles | TAO.com @Gylez]

Highly recommend everyone updates their @TAO_dot_com wallet 👀... more to come bittensor:native

[Senator Tim Scott @SenatorTimScott]

The Clarity Act takes the side of everyday Americans.

This historic legislation brings digital assets out of the shadows and into a system that is safer, fairer, and more transparent!

[WallStreetBets @wallstreetbets]

Bittensor $TAO alpha live right now 👀

https://t.co/SIXj5Ocxpo

[The TAO Daily @taodaily_io]

NEW 🚨

Watch Const's full Q&A conversation with the Cointelegraph team at Proof of Talk.

Const on how Bittensor competes with OpenAI: "I think we organize talent better than them, and I think we'll eventually train better models than them."

📽️ Credit: @Cointelegraph

[Senator Cynthia Lummis @SenLummis]

I've spent years building toward this moment. The Clarity Act is the most consequential financial legislation of this generation and we are going to get it done.

[Rob Greer @rob_svrn]

bittensor:native is the printing press of intelligence.

21 million tokens mined with useful ai work. the world will tap into Bittensor’s decentralized compute & intelligence like a faucet

intelligence will be commoditized the way information was after gutenberg

this is one of the greatest asymmetric opportunities of all time

[R.L. ₿ryer @rBryer23]

bittensor:native is ridiculously undervalued.

[1.] It will remain undervalued even after a 10x price increase during the upcoming cycle. Target is $3,000 per bittensor:native.

[2.] The project represents a superior form of capitalism with no monopoly privileges.

[3.] Its value comes from competition between subnets (specialized AI networks in most cases) to provide the best digital commodities and intelligence.

This is the most exciting innovation in technology since smart contracts on Ethereum.

[Pierre Rochard @BitcoinPierre]

The next bitcoin bull market has begun.

[Rob Greer @rob_svrn]

capital → compute → $tao

the history of the next 10 yrs of value

@const_reborn

[const @const_reborn]

Fiat used to print cash. Now it prints GPUs.

Either way, it all ends up flowing into the protocols.

[Senator Cynthia Lummis @SenLummis]

The Clarity Act passed committee. The floor is next. We did not come this far to quit at the 5 yard line.

[Mike Alfred @mikealfred]

The move from $16,000 to $126,000 to $60,000 was not a full cycle move. It was just a re-basing before the actual bull run. The actual bull run will take us from $60,000 to at least the $315,000 area. It will correspond with an actual economic and business cycle. Newbs will see.