Three Reasons TAO Shouldn’t Be Under $300

David Hepburn opens with a thesis that TAO is undervalued at sub-$300, and recent ecosystem changes are setting up conditions for that gap to close. The argument rests on three pillars: a network cleanup, an accessibility unlock, and the halving impact still working through the system.

TAO’s quiet relative strength

Before getting into the bull case, he highlights something easy to miss:

• September 2025: BTC over $114K, ETH over $4K, TAO just over $300.
• Today: BTC and ETH have roughly cut in half, while TAO sits just under $300.
• The April 2026 Covenant AI exit (“decentralization theater”) sent TAO from ~$350 to ~$230, but it has held up significantly better than the rest of the market through subsequent macro pressure.

Reason 1: Const’s emissions cleanup

A public service announcement from Const last week introduces an interim measure to block emissions to subnets engaging in foul play or with no clear path to value.

• Short-term: mildly bearish as wasteful subnets exit the ecosystem.
• Long-term: emissions get redirected toward legitimate builders and useful subnets, removing one of the largest structural sell-pressure sources on TAO.
• The framing: the Covenant exit was an unfortunate event that triggered exactly the kind of mechanism design fix that prevents recurrence. TAO should naturally return to prior highs as confidence rebuilds.

Reason 2: Staking just got dramatically more accessible

Most TAO holders never leave Tier-1 exchanges. Coinbase or Binance is where they stop. Wallets, Taostats extensions, and direct subnet staking are too complicated for the average investor.

That’s changing fast:

• April: Bitget added TAO staking.
• May: Crypto.com (via Yuma Group custody) added staking for both TAO and subnet tokens, accessible to their 150M+ global users.
• For context: Crypto.com transacts over $750B per year, versus a TAO subnet market cap of only ~$1B.
• 66% of TAO is already staked. Adding even a fraction of Crypto.com’s user base meaningfully reduces liquid supply.
• If Crypto.com sees demand, Binance and Coinbase are next. “April was Bitget. May was Crypto.com. Who’s June and July?”

Reason 3: The halving impact hasn’t fully hit yet

• TAO’s price action from peak to halving is tracking Bitcoin’s first halving cycle almost tick for tick.
• Less TAO entering the market means less sell pressure from validators and less inflation, the same dynamic that made Bitcoin’s halvings important.
• But the analogy he prefers isn’t Bitcoin 2012 (new, experimental), it’s Bitcoin 2016, where the asset already had institutional backing and infrastructure beginning to form.
• TAO’s halving comes layered with additional catalysts Bitcoin didn’t have: subnets, ETF momentum (Grayscale decision in August 2026), ETP awards, treasury accumulation, and the gap between AI stock valuations and AI crypto valuations.

The AI crypto rankings nuance

TAO ranks #2 among AI cryptocurrencies, but David points out that most of the others on the list are past-cycle tokens that pivoted into the AI narrative, DeFi tokens, metaverse tokens, whatever was trending before.

TAO has been AI-focused since day one. His view: those rotation tokens will switch again when the next narrative arrives. TAO won’t, because AI is the mission.

Watch this week: Proof of Talk

He says Proof of Talk as a near-term catalyst worth tracking. Last year TAO ran hard when it was mentioned alongside Nvidia’s CEO. This year’s attendee list includes Franklin Templeton, Swift, Bitmain, and Mastercard, names that could move the needle if any meaningful announcements land.

His positioning

• TAO is a token to stake, not trade. The volatility around sideways market conditions makes it punishing for short-term trades but rewarding for long-term accumulation.
• His mission: accumulating under $300.

Closing thought

The video ends with a clip of Jacob (Const) Steeves: Bitcoin is already 450x larger than the combined hash power of Google, IBM, Cerebras, AWS, and Nvidia’s data centers, built for a thousand times less capital. If digital currency markets can be focused on AI in the same way, decentralized AI could become a thousand times larger than any centralized AI organization in the world.

Scary, and a big deal.

Watch the full video below: