Bitcoin now, almost paradoxically to its original ethos, is being adopted by Wall Street. Bittensor is a new finger towards 'the man' of centralization. It is a burning narrative. With the rise of AI, concerns have arisen about the concentration and centralization of technology.
Bittensor, and its cryptocurrency, TAO, aims to decentralize AI services. Despite losing almost 53% in 2025, some believe that Bittensor is a next-generation Bitcoin for the age of AI. But, how realistic is this optimism?
The Premise and Promise of Bittensor
The network just completed a reward halving on December 15, reducing its minted coin supply. The problem is that many have heard this narrative before.
Many cryptocurrencies have claimed to be 'the next Bitcoin,' because there is money to be made with that story.
However, there could be some real value for Bittensor in the long term, though it has obstacles to overcome, like any ambitious crypto project like this. The story of Bittensor is not very different from that of Bitcoin: there are powerful incumbents, and a new network can challenge and even change this world order.
For years, influencers have echoed a phrase often similar and thematic of "long Bitcoin, short the banks." Even though Bitcoin is now embedded in Wall Street banks and publicly traded DAT stocks, this narrative worked well.
One premise is that AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Deepseek have become too big and frightening, and people need to worry about their rise.
Decentralizing artificial intelligence workloads and replacing proof-of-work puzzles with real-use AI is the basic essence of Bittensor.
"Bitcoin demonstrated that cryptographic incentives could coordinate a global hardware network to secure a ledger," said Evan Malanga, an executive at Yuma, one of the largest sponsors of the Bittensor platform, to BeInCrypto. "Bittensor takes that same mechanism and redirects computational power towards something that has direct benefits in the current world: Training and running AI models, applications, and infrastructure."
Another Bitcoin? Really?
It's important to note that Yuma is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), whose firm was one of the early sponsors of various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Zcash, and Decentraland.
He was also an early investor in Coinbase, Circle, and Chainalysis. DCG's CEO, Barry Silbert, is clearly on board with Bittensor, which for some could be seen as a positive sign.
Bittensor has some similarities to Bitcoin. There are only 21 million units of TAO, clearly a nod to BTC. Bittensor also has halvings, which in December reduced its rewards from 7,200 TAO to 3,600 per day.
Instead of the energy-intensive puzzles that Bitcoin uses, Bittensor uses something called proof of intelligence, where nodes must complete tasks to demonstrate their ability to handle AI workloads. The better the quality of a node's task output, the greater the likelihood that it can receive rewards in TAO.
The nodes that are allowed on the Bittensor network are assigned to a subnet, of which there are currently 128. These subnets have different specialties related to AI.
"Each subnet is like a specialized market for a specific type of AI service: some focus on image generation, others on language models," said Arrash Yasavolian, the co-founder of Taoshi, which operates a financial intelligence subnet.
Centralization versus Decentralization
Concerns about AI often center around a few companies that have concentrated power. Concentration in any industry typically means higher prices and poorer services for customers, sometimes both at the same time.
Bittensor seeks to make AI a global good with its decentralization features, such as having independent node operators feeding the subnets for their artificial intelligence capabilities.
"AI is redefining every industry," said Ken Jon Miyachi, CEO of BitMind, who runs a subnet focused on deepfake detections in Bittensor. "Bitcoin revolutionized value storage, but Bittensor is revolutionizing entire economic systems by turning intelligence into a global commodity."
But how decentralized is this network? On July 10, 2024, the Bittensor network stopped amid an $8 million hack that drained wallets. The chain went into a 'safe mode' that produced blocks without any transaction capability.
"Today there are legitimate concerns about centralization," noted Yasavolian from Taoshi. "The OpenTensor foundation is the only party responsible for validating blocks. The 10 largest subnet validators comprise approximately 67% of the total network stake weight."
Some might argue that the security risks of Bittensor and its ability to shut down the network are antithetical to decentralization. Advocates of the network say that full decentralization will come later, becoming 'credibly neutral' in the same way that Bitcoin is supposed to be for value storage purposes.
"The long-term strategic goal of Bittensor is to become a credibly neutral AI development tool. It's a progressive decentralization, similar to how Ethereum evolved," added Yasavolian.
The AI Alarm
One way to increase the decentralization of Bittensor and hear more dissenting voices is through subnet operators. These groups are investing time and money into the network, and they, like Yasavolian, express their opinions.
And the growth of the subnets has been strong. Since the beginning of 2025, the number of subnets has increased by 97%, from 65 to 128.
Sergey Khusnetdinov, AI Director at Gain Ventures, sees the subnet community as critical to Bittensor's success.
"The result is a meritocratic and self-improving ecosystem where useful intelligence does not come from a lab or corporation, but arises organically from a permissionless global community."
Centralized AI companies are valued quite ridiculously these days: OpenAI has a valuation of $500 billion, Anthropic is at $350 billion. It's rumored that Deepseek, based in China, is valued at $150 billion. With that in mind, what would be the value of a powerful AI network like Bittensor?
Miyachi, the CEO of BitMind who runs a deepfake detection subnet, optimistically believes that the Bittensor network could someday outshine that of Bitcoin.
"The value produced by the Bittensor ecosystem could surpass that of Bitcoin in the long run," he told BeInCrypto.
This could ultimately depend on how people perceive centralized AI systems over time, or if anyone is concerned. But Bitcoin has had great runs as people reacted to economic instability and centralization failures like a global pandemic, bank runs, and the devaluation of fiat currencies.
Perhaps soon, influencers might be saying, "long Bittensor, short centralized AI." But who knows? Sometimes, the future can be even stranger than what AI could predict.
#USNonFarmPayrollReport $BTC , $ETH
