Final Takeaway on $TAOMain takeaway here is that Barry Silbert (and perhaps DCG + Grayscale) were already invested
pretty heavily in the Bittensor ecosystem in one facet or another
before this news announcing Barry Silbert's new 'Yuma Group' creation where he has installed himself as its head in the role of CEO.
Therefore, one should expect that Silbert will be significantly motivated to ensure the Bittensor ecosystem grows to (hopefully, in his case) net him and his co-investors a decent return on his investment. Currently, the AI-based index basket fund that he launched via Grayscale (another subsidiary in Silbert's empire) that includes this asset ($TAO) in it is down
-17.93% from what
its NAV price was when the index launched (
you can verify that here).
When considering current market conditions, one has to imagine that this piss poor performance is considered borderline untenable for Barry and his cohort of investors that dumped a few hundred odd millions into this investment vehicle and other measures designed to bolster up this specific crypto platform.
Institutional Survey of Top VC Funds & Investors Hold Belief that AI Will be the Most Lucrative Vertical in Crypto During this Market Cycle This is all aside from the fact that AI-based projects are still a hot item in crypto, in general.
^ I'm making that statement based on the responses that the firm 'MV Capital' received on a survey of the cryptocurrency space they gave to "seventy six of the top liquid and venture allocators within crypto" (
you can find that here). The tl;dr of that survey (relevant to this), is that "
Respondees [sp?]
were most bearish on gaming...
and most bullish on Crypto x AI."
Respondents were also asked which vertical in crypto they felt would be the "best performer this cycle" and given the following choices: AI, DePIN, DeFi, L1s, Consumer, Infrastructure, Gaming, RWAs and L2s. What were the results?
"AI" received 42.9% of all votes among these top 70+ VC firms and funds that were surveyed.
So - consider all of this food for thought. Nobody can predict the future, but hopefully this serves as a comprehensive enough synopsis on the project to hold you all over until I'm finished publishing my piece on it.
Edit:
Tidied up some grammar + formatting and adding in the link to that survey I referenced in the last section. (11:15 a.m. EST ; Nov 23rd, 2024)