Why is TAO, Bittensor's token, causing controversy between Barry Silbert and Bitcoiners?

Why is TAO, Bittensor's token, causing controversy between Barry Silbert and Bitcoin supporters?

TAO has a fixed token supply of 21 million and is subject to a block reward halving process, just like BTC.

Oliver Knight | Edited by Sheldon Rebeck April 22, 2025, 3:57 PM

What you need to know:

• The comparison of TAO, the token of Bittensor, to Bitcoin has been criticized by the founder of Digital Currency Group.
• Like BTC, TAO has a fixed supply of 21 million tokens and undergoes a block reward sharing process.
• However, the project is different because it focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning. TAO price volatility has been significantly higher than BTC.

TAO, the token of AI-focused blockchain Bittensor, has become the source of conflict on X between Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert and die-hard supporters of Bitcoin (BTC), the original and largest cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin author and advocate Parker Lewis called Silbert and Raoul Pal, host of The Journey Man podcast, a group of “self-serving scammers” for promoting TAO in a recent episode.

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Silbert responded, writing, “Calling $TAO a scam is such a simplistic attack. Try improving your arguments.”

Grayscale Investments, one of Digital Currency Group’s subsidiaries, manages the Bittensor Trust, which currently has about $8 million in assets under management. It also has a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (GBTC) with $16.6 billion under management, as well as a bitcoin mini-trust ETF.

What is TAO?

Silbert sparked outrage among Bitcoiners by comparing Bittensor to the Bitcoin blockchain.

“It’s similar to Bitcoin: there was an original document that was then converted into code, and it has the same token economics,” he noted on the podcast.

While there are some parallels with BTC, notably TAO's supply is limited to 21 million tokens and there is a halving of block rewards, there are also significant differences in terms of the ethical aspects of the project and its application.

Bittensor is a decentralized network that combines blockchain and machine learning technologies. It was designed as a peer-to-peer AI platform where users can exchange AI models and earn rewards for doing so.

Bitcoin emerged in the libertarian cypherpunk era and was created primarily as a means of exchange to avoid the use of government currency. In recent years, it has also become a store of value, becoming the basis for companies to hedge against rising inflation.

The TAO token launched two years ago and has seen a lot of volatility, rising above $700 twice in 2024 before falling back to $200 twice. It has most recently traded around $339.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has increased from $22,000 in early 2023 to $109,000 in January. While it has had its share of fluctuations, they have not been as pronounced as the drops typically seen in the altcoin market. Bitcoin is currently valued at around $90,000, with a market cap of around $1.8 trillion. TAO has a market cap of around $2.98 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

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