Bittensor TAO jumps 32% as investors eye institutional adoption and first halving – DL News

Bittensor outperforms.

The crypto market suffered its worst leverage on record on Friday, sending Bitcoin down 12% as most smaller cryptocurrencies suffered larger losses.

Bittensor’s TAO is one of a handful of tokens to post a weekly gain despite volatility, climbing 32% over the past seven days.

“Institutional dynamics are driving a lot of interest and awareness in the market for Bittensor,” said Arrash Yasavolian, founder of Taoshi, a company focused on mining the Bittensor blockchain. DL News.

Institutional rise

On October 10, Grayscale, a New York-based crypto asset manager, filed an application with the United States 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 the creation of a new asset management company 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 could also create the anticipation and momentum that will drive the market forward,” Yasavolian said.

Bittensor is a blockchain network designed to provide an alternative to centrally controlled artificial intelligence powerhouses like OpenAI and Google.

The network allows anyone to contribute their computing power to AI applications, called subnetworks.

In return, these 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, the growing appeal among Bittensor’s many subnets is also attracting investor interest.

“There is now significant commercial momentum within the network itself,” he said. DL News. “Several consumer-facing products already run on Bittensor, and the top three subnets collectively generate over $20 million in annual recurring revenue. »

DL News could not independently verify the $20 million figure.

Among the largest subnets is Chutes AI, an AI compute platform that allows developers to deploy and scale AI models. It’s on track to generate $2.4 million in revenue in the coming year, according to data provided by the subnetwork.

Targon Compute, a confidential computing and verification platform, will bring in $10.4 million annually, according to Seth Bloomberg, an investment partner at venture capital firm Bittensor Unsupervised Capital.

Some subnets give consumer 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 in benchmark coding tests, closing in on the 74% score achieved by Anthropic’s Claude 4.1 model.

First half

Investors are also increasingly turning to Bittensor ahead of key network events.

“The most important upcoming milestone is the first halving, expected around December 2025, which will reduce daily TAO emissions by half,” Samaroo said.

Samaroo refers to the automatic halving of TAO rewards issued by the Bittensor network.

Like the Bitcoin blockchain, Bittensor is scheduled to halve TAO token rewards approximately every four years. Unlike Bitcoin, which is halved based on the number of blocks, Bittensor’s halving is triggered by the total supply of TAO tokens.

The halving could be a double-edged sword, however.

Decreasing rewards for network contributors may deter some as their payouts decrease.

“As this will be Bittensor’s first halving, we really don’t know how this is going to play out,” Yasavolian said. “In general, halvings bode well for long-term performance.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ DeFi correspondent based in Edinburgh. Contact us with advice at tim@dlnews.com.