Once upon a time, people said Amazon was “that weird online bookstore.”

When the first iPhone came out, people said, “It doesn’t even have buttons. This thing will never work.”

They also said, “Why do we need Google? We have Yahoo.”

And YouTube was “that site where people upload cat videos.”

That’s the moment we’re in with Bittensor. It still looks niche. Still looks experimental. Still looks “early.”

But those are exactly the types of plays that create fortunes for the patient and convicted.

Recently, my co-host JJ and I filmed our holiday special of the TAO Pod.

You should listen to the whole thing. (Link below.)

But here are the highlights:

1. Bitcoin = digital capital. Bittensor = digital capitalism.

Bitcoin pays you to solve a math puzzle only useful to Bitcoin. Bittensor pays you to solve real problems: coding, inference, GPU hosting, drug discovery, weather prediction, 3D models.

It’s 128 Satoshis running 128 micro-economies.

2. TAO has shown incredible strength during the recent drawdowns.

When Bitcoin dropped 30% recently, TAO barely flinched compared to other altcoins.

JJ called it “one of the strongest conviction communities he’s ever seen,” and I agree.

Why? Because people aren’t buying a currency—they’re buying exposure to a startup stock market that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

3. Subnets are early-stage startups open to everyone.

If you want exposure to Y Combinator-style moonshots, too bad. You’re not Sequoia. You’re not Benchmark. You’re not an LP in a $20B fund.

But on Bittensor?

You can accumulate a subnet at a $5M market cap before it builds a billion-dollar business. A Ridges or Shoots token at a $5M market cap is the kind of thing VCs hoard for themselves.

Here? Anyone can buy it. And to buy it, you need Tao. That’s the reflexive loop nobody’s priced in yet.

4. Retail never got VC returns from IPOs.

JJ went deep on this.

He did the research—15 years of tech IPOs—zero have given retail anything close to VC-style returns.

Not Uber. Not Snowflake. Not Palantir.

VCs get rich. Retail gets the exit liquidity.

Bittensor flips that entire system. Price discovery starts at $0, openly, with no bankers and no lockups.

5. Mining Tao today rhymes with mining Bitcoin in 2012.

Here’s something to think about:

Mining Bitcoin from 2012–2016 would have returned 10× more than buying Bitcoin.

Why? Hashrate was low. Competition was tiny. The incentives were huge.

Now? A good miner on a top subnet can make $1M+ a year doing work that directly solves real-world problems.

• writing code
• hosting models
• optimizing agents
• generating 3D assets
• discovering drugs
• predicting weather
• running inference
• training lightweight models

Not burning electricity for the sake of it. Building tech.

The Real Opportunity

Bittensor’s whole ecosystem is a skill accelerator disguised as a crypto network.

Whatever you’re obsessed with—AI, coding, trading, biology, gaming, design— there’s a subnet for it.

Or you can launch one.

Bitcoin took a swing at money. Bittensor is taking a swing at capitalism.

Once the first breakout subnet goes mainstream—and it will—that’s when the real repricing happens.

Click here to listen to the entire podcast.