Bittensor TAO Surges 30% in 12 Hours After US Government Orders Anthropic to Suspend AI Models

On June 12, the US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models for foreign nationals, according to Reuters. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick cited concerns that the models could be exploited by foreign military intelligence users. Anthropic complied by removing access for all customers, not just those abroad.

Bittensor's TAO token surged 30% within 12 hours of the news becoming public, with the price reaching $262.08 on June 16. Grayscale's head of research, Zach Pandl, framed the shutdown as evidence of centralized AI's regulatory vulnerability, describing Bittensor as offering "permissionless access to AI through a decentralized global network" — positioning it as a structural alternative immune to government access revocation orders.