Talking Tao: with Victor Teixeira from General TAO Ventures

Victor Teixeira (General TAO Ventures) traces his path from Contango Digital’s $10M blockchain–AI fund to becoming a full-stack Bittensor operator — incubating or advising multiple subnets (e.g., 23, Red Team, TPN), running the Round Table validator, and mining across the stack. He spotlights Subnet 35 (“Cartha”), an FX perp DEX co-built with Taoshi (Subnet 8): miners are either LPs or trader-miners; trading generates fees of which 50% go to LP miners and 40% go to vote-escrowed alpha holders as USDC dividends (weekly), creating aligned “alphanomics” that reduce sell pressure and reward real usage.

The broader discussion centres on revenue-first sustainability in the post-DTAO world. Buyback-and-burn isn’t dismissed, but Victor argues subnets should prioritise tangible earnings, robust VE models, and even prefunding/VC capital to bridge idea→revenue—plus new tools like lending against owner keys. With the TAO halving likely to thin liquidity growth per block, they expect more volatility (especially for smaller pools) and a premium on subnets that can fund OPEX, miner/validator sell-side, and sustain top-leaderboard emissions via real customers. For guest wish-lists to bring fresh eyeballs into BitTensor, Victor suggests Barry Silbert and Ejaz (Bankless)—and generally “everyone,” because mainstream adoption arrives when users benefit from Bittensor under the hood without even noticing.