Will Bittensor be Bigger than Bitcoin? | The TAO Pod
The James Altucher Show
James Altucher
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 August 2025
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Today on the James Altiger show. |
| 0:04.5 | Humanity deserves a solution for centralized power monopolies. |
| 0:10.9 | The idea of decentralization is that potentially every single person on the planet can contribute to what's happening. |
| 0:17.6 | We have not scratched this emphasis of intelligence. |
| 0:20.1 | Elon has had to get |
| 0:21.0 | up, raise venture capital, like do all these like super extensive things to build fraud. No single |
| 0:27.0 | company on the planet has a monopoly on AI talent. In the same way that no single company |
| 0:33.3 | on the planet has a monopoly on intelligence. No one has a monopoly on that. |
| 0:39.1 | Mark and Jason famously says, |
| 0:41.2 | software is eating the world. |
| 0:42.8 | All these technologies are getting transformed |
| 0:44.8 | to become software-based. |
| 0:46.8 | Now, AI is eating software. |
| 0:51.3 | This isn't your average business podcast, |
| 0:56.1 | and he's not your average host. |
| 0:58.5 | This is the James Altasier Show. |
| 1:16.3 | So I don't usually talk about investing on this podcast, but I just wanted to describe a little bit of what I've been up to lately. |
| 1:23.8 | So I had this idea where, well, first off, I've been very much into cryptocurrencies ever since about 2013. |
| 1:30.2 | I've gotten a lot of hateful comments and good comments as a result, ever since I started talking on CNBC about Bitcoin as early as 2013. But one of the cryptos I'm most excited about |
| 1:36.8 | is this crypto called Tao, T-A-O. And it's kind of the intersection between crypto and artificial |
| 1:44.1 | intelligence. And I'll describe why and how in a second, but it's kind of the intersection between crypto and artificial intelligence. |
| 1:45.1 | And I'll describe why and how in a second, but it's really fascinating. |
... |
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