Barry Silbert Doubles Down on Bittensor After First Halving as Grayscale Opens TAO Trust to US Investors

Just days after Bittensor executed the first halving in its six-year history, the decentralized AI network is drawing renewed attention from some of the biggest names in crypto finance. Barry Silbert, the billionaire founder of Digital Currency Group, has made it clear that Bittensor represents the most exciting development he has seen since Bitcoin — and he is putting significant capital behind that conviction.

TL;DR

• Bittensor completed its first-ever halving on December 15, 2025, reducing daily TAO emissions from 7,200 to 3,600 tokens
• TAO price held near $272 despite a 5.5% post-halving dip, with a market capitalization of approximately $2.7 billion
• Barry Silbert founded Yuma, a dedicated startup built entirely around Bittensor infrastructure
• Grayscale launched a Bittensor Trust with SEC-reporting filings for US accredited investors
• The next halving is projected for late 2029

A Halving Modeled After Bitcoin

At 8:30 AM New York time on December 15, Bittensor reduced the amount of daily tokens it issues from 7,200 to 3,600. Like Bitcoin, Bittensor has a hard cap of 21 million TAO tokens. The halving mechanism is built directly into the protocol, ensuring that the rate of new supply entering circulation slows over time.

The timing is significant. Bittensor reached 10.5 million tokens in circulation — exactly half of its total supply — triggering the first supply squeeze in the network’s history. At the current post-halving emission rate, the second halving is expected in late 2029, giving the network years of reduced inflation to build organic demand.

TAO initially dropped approximately 5.5% to around $272 following the event, but analysts note that this pattern mirrors Bitcoin’s own post-halving behavior, where short-term selling pressure gives way to longer-term supply-driven appreciation.

Silbert Goes All In on Decentralized AI

While the halving itself was a technical milestone, the institutional momentum behind Bittensor tells a more compelling story. Barry Silbert, whose Digital Currency Group held roughly $100 million worth of TAO as of 2024, has since founded an entirely new company called Yuma dedicated to building on the Bittensor network.

“It is the thing that I have gotten most excited about since Bitcoin,” Silbert said in a September 2025 interview with Fortune. That statement carries weight coming from someone whose company also owns Grayscale, the world’s largest crypto asset manager.

Silbert is not the only one making big bets. Polychain Capital held approximately $200 million in TAO, and Dao5 held another $50 million, according to 2024 disclosures. Together, these three firms alone controlled roughly $350 million worth of TAO — a concentration of institutional capital that is rare for a project ranked outside the top 40 by market cap.

Grayscale Brings TAO to Wall Street

Perhaps the most consequential development for Bittensor’s long-term trajectory is Grayscale’s move to offer institutional exposure to TAO. Just one week before the halving, Grayscale announced that its Bittensor Trust had begun trading in the United States, giving accredited investors a regulated vehicle to gain price exposure to TAO without holding the token directly.

In a research note published ahead of the halving, Grayscale analysts described the event as a potential “positive catalyst for price,” drawing parallels to Bitcoin’s historical post-halving rallies. The firm also categorized Bittensor as part of the “Core AI Infrastructure” layer alongside tokens like NEAR and RENDER, a classification that helps decouple blue-chip AI assets from the more speculative corners of the market.

Sami Kassab, managing partner at Unsupervised Capital, a hedge fund dedicated to Bittensor, echoed that optimism. “Halvings are not complicated. Historically, halvings have been bullish because there is simply less inventory hitting the market,” he said. “The same logic applies to TAO.”

What the Supply Squeeze Means for Miners

The halving cuts miner rewards in half overnight, which forces less efficient operators off the network while rewarding those who can maintain profitability at lower emission levels. In Bittensor’s case, miners compete to process AI computations across the network’s growing ecosystem of subnets — specialized compartments for different AI tasks.

The reduced emission rate is expected to increase competition among subnets for a shrinking pool of TAO rewards, a dynamic that Bittensor’s Dynamic TAO upgrade earlier in 2025 was specifically designed to handle. Under the new Taoflow emission model, subnets that fail to attract sufficient staking activity receive fewer emissions, effectively starving low-quality operations while rewarding productive ones.

Why This Matters

Bittensor’s first halving is more than a tokenomics event. It represents the maturation of a network that aims to decentralize the most powerful technology of the decade. With Barry Silbert building an entire company around the protocol, Grayscale offering Wall Street access, and a supply squeeze now in effect, Bittensor is positioned at the intersection of two of the most powerful trends in technology: artificial intelligence and decentralized finance.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.