TAO, the native token of AI-focused blockchain Bittensor, has been inflicting pressure on X between Digital Forex Group founder Barry Silbert and staunch supporters of bitcoin (BTC), the unique and largest cryptocurrency.
Creator and bitcoin supporter Parker Lewis known as Silbert and Raoul Pal, the presenter of The Journey Man podcast, a gaggle of “affinity scammers” for selling TAO on a latest episode.
Silbert responded by writing: “calling $TAO a rip-off is such a lazy assault. do higher”
Grayscale Investments, one in all Digital Forex Group’s subsidiaries, runs a Bittensor Belief that at the moment has round $8 million in property below administration. It additionally has a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (GBTC) with $16.6 billion below administration in addition to a bitcoin mini belief ETF.
What’s TAO?
Silbert sparked the bitcoiners’ ire by evaluating Bittensor to the Bitcoin blockchain.
“It is similar to bitcoin, there was a white paper that was code then launched and it has the identical token economics,” he stated within the podcast.
Whereas there are some similarities to BTC in that TAO’s provide is capped at 21 million tokens and it goes by means of block reward halving occasions, there are additionally stark variations when it comes to the challenge’s ethos and use case.
Bittensor is a decentralized community that merges blockchain know-how with machine studying. It was designed to change into a peer-to-peer AI market, the place customers can share and monetize AI fashions.
Bitcoin was spawned out of the Libertarian cypherpunk period and designed primarily as a peer-to-peer fee technique that averted government-issued foreign money. Lately has additionally emerged a retailer of worth, turning into a mainstay on firm stability sheets to mitigate rising inflation.
The TAO token was launched two years in the past and has skilled excessive volatility, rising to above $700 on two events in 2024 earlier than cratering to round $200 each occasions. It was buying and selling not too long ago round $339.
Bitcoin, in the meantime, has risen from $22,000 for the reason that begin of 2023 to as excessive as $109,000 in January. Whereas it is had its ups and downs, they don’t seem to be as marked because the plunges sometimes seen throughout the altcoin market. Bitcoin is at the moment priced round $90,000 with a market cap about $1.8 trillion. TAO has a market cap round $2.98 billion, based on knowledge on CoinMarketCap.
