Will Bittensor be Bigger than Bitcoin? | The TAO Pod

Aug 9, 2025

Joseph Jacks, founder of OSS Capital and an early-stage investor in AI, shares his insights on the future of decentralized AI with James Altucher. They explore the revolutionary potential of Bittensor in comparison to established giants like xAI. The conversation covers innovative topics like proof-of-useful-work mining and custom AI agents, emphasizing how Bittensor could reshape capitalism. They also discuss the democratization of AI resources via subnets, and Jacks makes bold predictions about TAO's future value in the cryptosphere.

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ANECDOTE

Repurposing A Public Company To Hold TAO

James Altucher repurposed Synaptogenics into Tau Synergies to hold TAO.
He bought ~40,000 TAO as a public-company crypto position.

INSIGHT

BitTensor Accesses Tens Of Thousands Of GPUs

Joseph Jacks says BitTensor aggregates roughly 20,000 GPUs across subnets.
That supplies significant AI compute without centralized CapEx.

INSIGHT

Proof-Of-Useful-Work Replaces Wasteful Hashing

Joseph Jacks explains BitTensor rewards miners for useful tasks like training, inference, and datasets.
Miners earn TAO while producing AI-ready assets instead of pointless hashing.

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Episode Description:

Hosted by James Altucher (serial entrepreneur, bestselling author of "Choose Yourself," podcaster, hedge fund manager, chess master, and investor in over 20 companies, with expertise in crypto and AI) and Joseph Jacks (founder and general partner of OSS Capital, the world's first VC firm dedicated to commercial open-source software; early-stage investor in AI and open-source tech, previously Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Quantum Corporation).

In the premiere episode, James and Joe explore Bittensor's decentralized AI ecosystem, contrasting it with centralized giants like xAI's Grok 4. They discuss subnets providing GPUs, datasets, and models; proof-of-useful-work mining; building custom AI agents; and Bittensor's potential to outpace Big Tech in achieving superintelligence.

Plus, tokenomics, real-world apps, capitalism parallels, and bold predictions on TAO's future value.

Key Timestamps & Topics:

00:00:00 - Intro: Podcast overview, AI/crypto news (Grok 4, Bitcoin ATH), centralized vs. decentralized AI.
00:09:00 - Proof of Useful Work: Mining datasets, models, inference on Bittensor.
00:10:00 - Subnet Deep Dives: Dataverse (13) for data scraping; building trading models.
00:16:00 - Chutes (64): Cheap AI inference, e.g., Bible chatbot at 1/50th OpenAI cost.
00:23:00 - Agentic AI: Building owned agents, avoiding Big Tech biases/control.
00:28:00 - Scaling & Future: Decentralization's infinite potential; Bitcoin compute parallels.
00:33:00 - Superintelligence Path: Bittensor faster than Elon; energy/chip challenges.
00:34:00 - Bittensor's Early Stage: Like 1990s internet, needs better user interfaces.
00:38:00 - Chutes Economics: 10T+ tokens served, 4.4K H100 GPUs, user growth.
00:50:00 - Valuation & Growth: Subnets as companies; TAO potentially 5-10x Bitcoin.
01:02:00 - Bittensor as Pure Capitalism: Incentives for supply/demand; upgrading equity models.
01:09:00 - Centralization Risks: Elon/Meta control; Bittensor's global solution.
01:13:00 - Wrap-Up: Teasing future episodes on subnets, AI ventures.

Key Takeaways:

Bittensor incentivizes ~20-100K GPUs permissionlessly, rivaling xAI at zero CapEx.
Subnets like Chutes (inference) and Dataverse (data) enable cheap, owned AI models for anyone.
Decentralization democratizes AI talent/compute, potentially building AGI faster than centralized efforts.
Quote: "Bittensor is the most expressive language of value in the history of languages of value." – Joseph Jacks

Resources & Links:

Bittensor Official: bittensor.com
Taostats (Explorer/TAO App): taostats.io
Subnet 64 (Chutes): taostats.io/subnets/64
Subnet 13 (Dataverse): macrocosmos.ai/sn13
Akash Network: akash.network
xAI: x.ai

Follow Hosts: @jaltucher & @josephjacks_ on X

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