Grayscale Investments has officially launched the Grayscale Bittensor Trust, a regulated investment vehicle providing traditional investors exposure to the TAO token without direct ownership. The announcement triggered a significant price surge for Bittensor's native asset, with TAO jumping approximately 10% on Tuesday, breaching the $290 level and reaching its highest price in several weeks. The 24-hour trading volume exceeded $230 million, signaling strong market interest.
The trust, trading on OTC Markets under the ticker GTAO, tracks TAO's market price using the Coin Metrics Real-Time Bittensor Reference Rate, minus fees. It reported a net asset value of $7.96 per share and a total expense ratio of 2.5% as of early January. This structure allows accredited investors to gain exposure through a traditional security framework, bypassing the complexities of direct token custody.
This launch is part of a broader institutional push into the AI-crypto sector. Grayscale has already filed paperwork with US regulators to convert this trust into a spot ETF, aiming to expand regulated crypto offerings beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. The move follows a pivotal change in the Bittensor ecosystem: the network completed its first halving event in mid-December, cutting daily TAO emissions by roughly half. This introduced tighter supply dynamics, drawing comparisons to Bitcoin's scarcity model.
Bittensor itself operates as a decentralized marketplace for machine intelligence, where contributors earn TAO for providing AI services. The trust launch, combined with the recent halving, is seen as a major step toward mainstream institutional adoption for crypto assets outside the largest tokens. While the initial rally cooled slightly, with TAO pulling back toward $280, analysts view the price action as a reassessment of the asset's long-term positioning within the growing narrative of decentralized AI as an alternative to Big Tech-controlled models.
