Overview
- Anthropic disabled its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all users after a U.S. export-control order on June 12 that had sought to block access by foreign nationals.
- Traders quickly moved into decentralized-AI tokens, with Bittensor’s TAO climbing about 30% within 12 hours and other tokens such as Venice and ICP posting gains.
- TAO traded near $260 on June 16 with heavy 24-hour volume and a market value around $2.5 billion, but the token remains well below its March 2024 peak and has shown sharp past drawdowns.
- Institutional analysts, including Grayscale’s head of research Zach Pandl, said the episode highlights centralized control over top AI models and could raise demand for permissionless networks like Bittensor.
- Observers warn that Bittensor’s network and model quality are still far smaller than major labs, so businesses that lose access to closed models may look for alternatives but should expect technical limits and sustained investment risk.