Opinion: Why Bittensor is a Scam, and TAO is Heading Towards Zero?
Original Author: WeirdMind
Starting a long post to document my thoughts: Why is #Bittensor a scam, and $TAO is heading to zero?
First of all, although Bittensor has always touted itself as a "fair mining" project, the underlying Subtensor is neither a PoW chain nor a PoS chain; it is a single-chain network managed by the Opentensor Foundation (Bittensor's foundation), with a very opaque mechanism.
As for the so-called "Triumvirate + Senate" binary governance structure, the triumvirate consists of three Opentensor Foundation employees, and the Senate consists of the top 12 ranked validation nodes, all of whom are insiders or stakeholders.



Secondly, on January 3, 2021, the "Kusanagi" release marked the activation of the Bittensor network, allowing miners and validators to start receiving the first batch of TAO rewards. From network activation to the launch of the subnet on October 2, 2023, a total of 5.38 million TAO have been mined by Bittensor in the 2 years and 9 months. However, there is no documentation or information indicating how the tokens generated during the period from January 3, 2021, to October 2, 2023, when the subnet went live, were distributed according to what rules and where they ultimately ended up.
It can be reasonably speculated that these tokens were divided among internal members and interest groups because, unlike Bitcoin, Bittensor was hatched and invested by VCs.
If you take this portion of the tokens and divide it by the current circulation of 8.61 million, at least 62.5% of TAO is in the hands of internal members and interest groups. Furthermore, the Opentensor Foundation and some VC investors also operate validation node businesses on Bittensor, so the percentage of chips in their hands will only be higher than this 62.5% figure.

Similar to the recent Avalanche of OM a few days ago, all projects with an inexplicably high market cap, their distorted market cap is often due to poor circulation.
Billions market cap backed by poor liquidity.
The following chart illustrates the historical staking status of TAO. Don't be fooled into thinking that TAO's staking rate has gradually increased from low to high. The reason it is depicted this way is due to TAO's intense inflation.
In reality, TAO's staking rate has never been below 70%, reaching close to 90% at its highest. Based on TAO's current market cap of 2 billion USD, it means that at least 1.4 billion USD worth of TAO has never entered circulation. The actual market cap of TAO is around 600 million USD, with a corresponding FDV of up to 5 billion USD, a typical project with low circulation and high market cap.
The so-called AI project ranked first by market cap, how its bubble was inflated by whales, is worth pondering.

Lastly, the so-called dTAO upgrade is more like providing OGs with an opportunity to exit liquidity. It allows you to buy subnetwork tokens with high leverage and take over the TAO held by the vested interests.
According to the three-disc theory, Bittensor's dTAO upgrade in February of this year introduced new Ponzi scheme models, the "Split Disc" and the "Mutual Aid Disc," in a situation where the "Bonus Disc" was no longer sustainable. The core purpose is to leverage down in a weakening old narrative and an external liquidity almost squeezed dry by fabricating a new narrative to attract new external liquidity.
First is the "Split Disc": By allowing all subnets to issue tokens, TAO has successfully positioned itself as the base currency for all Bittensor subnet tokens, whose value is supported by tokens from several dozen (and increasingly more) subnets.
Due to differences in the depth of trading pools, subnet tokens often experience astonishing price surges. With this, Bittensor has showcased to the outside world a disguised eco-system that offers high ROI opportunities. The exaggerated nominal ROI provided by Subnet Alpha tokens artificially created significant buying pressure for TAO and acted as a camouflage for the root network validation nodes' TAO sell-off.
Unfortunately, due to Bittensor's closed ecosystem and the market transition from bull to bear, the dTAO upgrade failed to attract sufficient external liquidity, and even internal liquidity (those staked in the root network) was not adequately mobilized and activated.
Simultaneously, the lowered entry barriers and unlimited token issuance for subnets have excessively diluted the overall liquidity of Bittensor's already limited ecosystem.
Second is the "Mutual Aid Disc." Unfortunately, Bittensor's subnet token issuance does not establish a highly circulating mutual-aid model as seen in Pump.fun on Solana, as Bittensor's network infrastructure is very poor, and even different subnet tokens cannot be exchanged, making it difficult for subnet token participants to migrate liquidity between different subnets. This further exacerbates the liquidity dilution issue brought about by a high split ratio, preventing funds from remaining engaged in the ecosystem for continuous speculation.
Once the whales of the root network start collectively fleeing, both on-chain and off-chain liquidity will quickly dry up.
The moment you sell, game over.

So are the whales fleeing? The answer is "they are fleeing"!
Since the launch of dTAO:
➤ The Bittensor protocol injected 450,000 TAO into the subnet pool
➤ 150,000 TAO (33%) flowed to the root network validation nodes through an "automatic sell-off" mechanism
➤ The root network staking amount (τ₀) decreased by 150,000 TAO (5,860,000 → 5,710,000)
This means:
300,000 TAO (≈70 million USD) successfully fled from the root network and may be liquidated on a CEX.


Moreover, Bittensor's base before was the subnet and miners. Bittensor's previous pattern was like a VC, providing funds to projects to focus on building a valuable business model first without immediately worrying about making money to ensure a balance of income and expenditure. This is the core reason why projects are attracted to build subnets on Bittensor.
Projects attracted to Bittensor brought miners who provide computing power (in Bittensor's terms, "intelligence"). This "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" situation is the core reason why Bittensor could become the leading cryptocurrency AI project by market capitalization.
However, after the dTAO upgrade, the interests of subnet projects, miners, and validation nodes are no longer aligned, and the previous mutual benefit scenario is no more. The dTAO model does not bring any benefits to subnet projects, and the collapse of the economic model is currently the biggest and most fundamental problem for Bittensor.
In Bittensor's dTAO model, the Subnet Alpha token is a kind of "voucher" we receive for staking TAO in the subnet, not a Token that can circulate in the general sense. This makes it difficult for subnet projects to invent any effective Tokenomics for these tokens. Besides being able to mint more Alpha tokens, these Alpha tokens have no utility for retail holders. From what I have observed, the most common way subnet projects are trying to pump the token price now is by announcing that project revenue will be used to buy back Alpha tokens, for example, Chutes (SN64).
However, if the Subnet Owner can only empower the Alpha token in this way, then the funny thing happens. The 18% Alpha tokens dTAO allocated to the Subnet project will forever stay in the hands of the project itself. After all, if you have announced a buyback of tokens using project revenue, why would you sell your own tokens?
Selling and buying back are contradictory.
Therefore, not only can the Subnet Owner not receive any income from the dTAO model, but they even have to subsidize it: create external revenue and inject it into their Subnet's Alpha tokens. This means that Subnet projects and miners are essentially working for the validators. Validators, as the privileged class of the Bittensor network, not only cannot do anything of value but can continuously sell Subnet Alpha tokens from the start of the dTAO upgrade, with up to 1/3 of the daily emission flowing back to the root network's TAO.
The reason Bittensor can attract other projects to build Subnets on top of them is fundamentally because the previous TAO emission was a good subsidy mechanism for emerging projects without income, allowing these projects to focus solely on their operational models that needed to be run.
If not only does this subsidy mechanism disappear, but it even reverses, then why would Subnet projects still want to build Subnets on Bittensor? Going solo, keeping all the income for themselves, isn't that better?
Therefore, the dTAO model, as a means for interest groups to dump their holdings, is harming the foundation of Bittensor's development to date. Although most of the Subnet business models in the Bittensor ecosystem are a mess that can't even be looked at, without them, Bittensor would also lose its last fig leaf.
References:
1. Bittensor Official Documentation: docs.bittensor.com
2. Report by @harry_xymeng "Bittensor: When the Music Stops": prism-pancake-61a.notion.site/Bittensor-432c…
3. Guide by @thecryptoskanda "The Three Pan Principle - The Ultimate Guide to Ponzi Construction": x.com/thecryptoskand…
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GOONC quickly formed an active trading community post-launch, with a lot of discussion and trading signals appearing on X platform (such as the 292x return signal provided by DeBot). Liquidity pools on exchanges like Raydium and Meteora grew rapidly, supporting high trading volumes and price increases.
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As of 1:30 pm on May 14, the price stabilized around $0.039, with a total market cap and FDV both around $39.6 million, and a 24-hour trading volume of $5.43 million. Active platforms include XT.COM, LBank, Meteora, and others.
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Binance Sparks "Delist Concept": Can CEX Still Produce the Next ALPACA?
On April 24, Binance announced that it would delist four tokens, including Alpaca Finance ($ALPACA), on May 2, and cease trading of these pairs' perpetual futures contracts at 00:00 on May 1, 2025, Beijing time. Fast forward to the last day of perpetual futures trading delisting, ALPACA surged on the liquidation heat map. Over the past 24 hours, a total of $52.21 million evaporated in ALPACA's contract trading, exceeding the sum of the token's liquidation volume over the past two years.
Historically, when a token is listed on Binance, many traders would buy the news instantly ("Buy the News"). As the Binance listing effect gradually waned, traders found another path, which is to short sell the tokens set to be delisted from Binance ("Sell the News"). This strategy often has a very high success rate. However, as traders followed this path, they encountered the Alpaca on their short-selling journey.
Every thrilling market manipulation game requires careful preparation. Before Binance's official announcement, on April 10, $ALPACA was ranked 7th in the preliminary list of the second batch of "Vote for Delisting" on Binance, causing its price to plummet almost by half. However, in the five days leading up to Binance's official announcement, from April 19 to April 23, trading volume suddenly surged.
The story traces back to the start of Binance's second round of "Vote for Delisting," where ALPACA was included in the delisting candidates list, ranked 7th among 17 projects. After the completion of Binance's delisting vote count, $ALPACA was included in the projects to be delisted. The market did not react significantly, price fluctuations were not substantial, but trading volumes expanded abnormally, suggesting the entry of "manipulative funds" into the community.
On April 24, Binance officially announced the delisting of the $ALPACA spot trading pair on May 2 and the settlement of the futures contracts on April 30. Following the announcement, the spot price of $ALPACA dropped from $0.0329 to $0.029, with a market cap of only about $5 million. However, what followed were two price "rollercoaster" moments; within an hour, the price surged from $0.029 to $0.0857, an increase of about 195%, only to rapidly drop back to $0.04 within 3 hours. Shorts were caught off guard, and the open interest of contracts surged rapidly, initiating the "long and short grinder" mode.
On April 25, Alpaca Finance officially announced that the trading volume in the past 24 hours had exceeded 1 billion tokens. The liquidity provider had suggested a "minting for stability" to be returned to the treasury after a decrease in trading volume. However, as public opinion began to ferment, opposition filled the community. Alpaca Finance deleted the previous tweet and posted a new one at 9 p.m. on the same night, announcing the cancellation of the minting due to community opposition.
On April 26, Binance amended the contract funding rate rules, shortening the maximum rate cap settlement period to hourly and setting it at up to ±2%. Some high-leverage accounts continued to hold short positions against the high rate and were liquidated. Millions of dollars disappeared within a few hours, with $13 million in short positions vanishing on a token with a market cap of less than $30 million.
With the establishment of this short-selling trend, the price skyrocketed nearly 12 times from a low of $0.029 to $0.3477 within 3 days. The contract's open interest surged significantly, especially with a notable increase in short positions, resembling a microcosm of the Wall Street battle of GME's retail investors. However, this time, the retail investors' opponents could continue to mint additional chips.
From April 26 to April 29, these days were relatively calm, with the price fluctuating around $0.2 to $0.34. On April 29, Binance announced another increase in the rate cap to ±4%. Theoretically, such a high rate would severely impact short positions. If the rate remains at -4%, the bears will face a 96% "cost of ruin" after holding a short position for 24 hours. However, miraculously, the price plummeted from $0.27 to $0.067.
On April 30, with the contract delisting and liquidation scheduled in the final 24 hours, the price continued to experience intense fluctuations. ALPACA's attention peaked, with its highest price reaching $1.2 at one point. From a week before the delisting announcement to the eve of the contract delisting, ALPACA's price surged 40 times, creating an independent market for the token delisted by Binance. The total liquidation volume across the network also reached $50 million, with $42 million in "bearish fuel" beneath the price surge.
After the first surge of ALPACA, Heyi, the co-founder of Binance, replied to a netizen asking, "Can the teacher who buys the shell guarantee breakeven?" This has also triggered endless speculation among community members.
KOL Tunbtc believes that Heyi's reply to this matter was the starting point of ALPACA's surge. "The large holders of Alpaca's native token, by transferring spot chips, operating rights, and distribution rights, have pledged allegiance to Binance's deep-water core interest circle, allowing it to fully harvest market liquidity before delisting, slaughtering opposing positions." Through a triple path of fees, contract liquidations, and spot volatility, they converted user attention into profits.
He also called on Binance to thoroughly investigate this matter, clarify which market maker is manipulating the candlestick patterns, as ALPACA saw an 18x surge within 24 hours with users liquidated of tens of millions of dollars, while previously GPS's 500% surge was promptly halted, and expressed his sentiment: "All of this is thought-provoking."
Wenze, the founder of Beta Capital, believes that bypassing the regular listing process, buying shells, renaming, and restarting has crossed Binance's bottom line of maintaining listing credibility and brand compliance. Binance sometimes has a high tolerance for market fluctuations, and the OM issuance only adjusts the collateralization ratio, with many projects only allowed for leveraged trading. However, once the project, such as these "shell projects," is identified, it is easily labeled for observation, triggering a vote for delisting, ultimately leading to delisting rather than using mild measures.
Renowned KOL Rui, "YeruiZhang," likened the ALPACA incident to "crazy revenge on an ex" and shared a piece of insider information, claiming that the original whale behind ALPACA was a team that controlled BSC's MEV for a period of time and expressed dissatisfaction with Binance's current management for some reason. The comments section is rampant with speculation that it is BSC's whale 48CLUB, and 48CLUB's Ian even personally appeared to eat "his own melon."
With the recent buzz around VOXEL's surge and the wealth effect and discussion surrounding ALPACA, more and more "delisting concepts" have emerged. This concept does not necessarily refer to tokens that have already been delisted but rather shares some common characteristics of delisted tokens.
Famous KOL Chuanmo recently shared on Twitter his logic for choosing concept tokens and listed several tokens, all of which experienced varying degrees of price increase after his recommendation.
His "Concept Delisting" strategy involves selecting low-cap tokens from Bybit and Binance, arranging them by market cap from lowest to highest, with almost 100% price increase for the tokens with the highest holdings/circulating market cap. He buys three tokens daily following this order with a fixed amount, and based on the holdings/circulating supply ratio, he removes tokens that no longer meet the criteria daily and continues to buy the new top three tokens.
Many community members have tested this strategy, with some creating helpful tools. The dreamer Disney "discountifu" has created a dashboard, and Vivek10 early bird "vivekw_eth" has developed a monitoring and alert system that can be directly pushed to WeChat with a copyable link, although it is currently deployed locally and not yet entirely stable.
However, when using tools created for free by community members, please be cautious. While there are many enthusiastic contributors in the community, there are also many uncertain factors in this dark forest.
In an increasingly insular market, retail investors not only have to contend with whales and other retail investors but also must bear many unstable elements. The recent ALPACA incident serves as a warning to us. Whether it's a primary or secondary listing on a top-tier exchange or the "Concept Delisting" approach, we need to make rational asset allocations amidst FOMO to protect our principal and reach the other shore.
The mention of all tokens above does not constitute financial investment advice "NFA".
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While this 'OpenAI Endorsement' is currently just community speculation, it is definitely a good card to play to fuel hype. Saying "we are pure speculation" on one hand, while tagging a few "AI + a16z" on the other.
GOONC took off as soon as it launched. After its launch on May 13, 2025, its market capitalization skyrocketed to $22 million within 4 hours, with a trading volume exceeding $25.6 million in 24 hours. According to platform data, the first day of trading saw an astonishing +41,100% surge, soaring from $0.0000001 to $0.02, becoming a "missed-the-boat" situation.
GOONC quickly formed an active trading community post-launch, with a lot of discussion and trading signals appearing on X platform (such as the 292x return signal provided by DeBot). Liquidity pools on exchanges like Raydium and Meteora grew rapidly, supporting high trading volumes and price increases.
The real climax occurred between May 13 and May 14, with the market cap rising to $5.5 million in the morning and directly surpassing $55 million in the afternoon. By the 14th, it briefly approached a $70 million market cap, with the trading volume soaring to $59 million. Some community members even posted screenshots claiming an increase of +85,000%, creating a new myth out of the ruins.
As of 1:30 pm on May 14, the price stabilized around $0.039, with a total market cap and FDV both around $39.6 million, and a 24-hour trading volume of $5.43 million. Active platforms include XT.COM, LBank, Meteora, and others.
Although there was a slight pullback from the peak ($0.07), the coin's popularity remains strong. For a coin that relies purely on "irony + community + X post" to thrive, this performance is already at a stellar level.
Currently, the background of the token's development team is not transparent, increasing the potential risk of a rug pull. Rugcheck.xyz warns that the creator of the GOONC contract may have permission to modify the contract (e.g., change fees or mint additional tokens), posing certain security risks.
Community members speculate that the meteoric rise of GOONC may be the "last hurrah".
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