Bittensor Backer Sees Its TAO Token Topping $62,500 In 2030 From $400s Today
Bittensor’s decentralized AI model may be the best-kept secret in crypto—and one venture capitalist believes it could go 135x from today’s price
At a recent summit in Austin, Texas, venture capitalist and Contango Digital Assets founder Mike Grantis made a headline-grabbing call: he believes the price of TAO, the native token of decentralized AI network Bittensor, could surpass $62,500 by the end of 2030.
That’s a 13,500% increase from where TAO trades today—roughly $474 as of this writing, according to Coinmarketcap.
The Contango Blockchain x AI Fund is investing in projects building in the Bittensor ecosystem, a decentralized AI project. Grantis delivered the bold projection during his keynote at the inaugural Bittensor Endgame Summit, a three-day gathering of developers, researchers, and investors aligned around the emerging thesis that decentralization—not Big Tech—is the future of artificial intelligence.
“Technology grows exponentially,” Grantis said in a follow-up interview. “And each iteration of technology moves faster than the previous. If Bitcoin could reach a trillion-dollar market cap in 12 years just as a store of value, then a network like Bittensor—with real utility, developer adoption, and hundreds of functional AI subnets—has the potential to outpace even that.”
Grantis provided a slide of assets that each reached a $1 trillion market valuation—and how long it took listed below—as part of his summit presentation. He predicts that once Bittensor reaches that valuation mark it will be well on its way to achieving his per token price estimate as well.
Is Bittensor Crypto, AI or Both?
At its core, Bittensor is a blockchain-based protocol that rewards developers, researchers, and entrepreneurs for building useful AI tools and services. Its unique structure decentralizes both AI training and inference by connecting independent networks (called subnets) through a shared token, TAO, which powers economic incentives and validation.
“Bittensor is not just about AI,” Grantis noted. “What it is—at the deepest layer—is a mechanism for aligning incentives and creating marketplaces that drive the creation of digital commodities. Right now, most of those are AI-based, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Unlike traditional tech platforms that hoard proprietary models, energy and data, Bittensor encourages openness and collaboration by letting anyone contribute or compete to build better AI.
That structure leads to what Grantis described as a powerful economic flywheel, “You don’t have to build a product, raise money, and sell it to customers before you get paid. On Bittensor, you build something useful, and if the network agrees, you start earning emissions—real value—on day one.”
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