The quiet before the storm... I've done 57 zoom calls in the last 3 weeks. About half with capital allocators like Funds, Funds of Funds and Investment firms. About half with subnet owners. 5 total waste of time zooms and 3 no shows. Almost every single call, I've left feeling, "Wow"... Either it's a subnet owner that's properly building and getting ducks in a row to start shipping and getting revenue (which will be the lifeblood for subnets (trust me on this)). Or it's a firm that's looking to allocate a lot of money into Bittensor. Or it's a firm that's already got a ton of TAO but hasn't publicly announced yet. Bittensor will NOT be a retail driven entity. Bittensor is a unique chimera straddling 3 separate worlds. 1.) It is pure AI. Possibly the purest of AI plays. 2.) It's a VC/PE candy shop! Each subnet is an independent AI start up maniacal in their mission to nail their chosen niche. This candy shop really is the talk of the town in VC land... And 3.) Due to Yuma Consensus, it 100% NEEDS a Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) and so it has all the amazing pumpy mechanics and extreme capital inflow multipliers that a typical crypto project has. So it doesn't NEED retail. Not trying to offend anyone here, but it will become apparent with time. The huge amounts of capital trying to find its way into Bittensor will create an almighty supply shock. I'm literally talking about hundreds of millions of Dollars that have already been earmarked for TAO. But there simply isn't enough circulating for these inflows. So with the crazy inflow multiplier it already has AND the supply shock, I'm convinced we will see a 2017 Ethereum style price action soon. But like with anything crypto, 90% of the move will happen in the last 10% of the time. Forget the sum of subnet crash, or those whining about price. It's all going to seem irrelevant when it kicks off. You just need to be in TAO or alpha. It really is as simple as that... And in terms of which alpha, seriously, the VC/PE boys will only care about subnets: - With at least 1 competent biz operator in the team that has taken things to market. If you're a subnet that doesn't have someone like this, you need to quickly find a competent CEO/COO/CCO. - They want to see a clear route to market and revenue plan. And what you'll do with that revenue. Believe it or not, they don't actually want you to just spaff it all on buying back your own alpha and burning it. Alpha holders would love that, but the big money won't. They'll like a bit of that in order to crank up subnet emissions for increased cashflow, but they'll want most surplus funds to go on growth reinvestment. - They want to find subnets that really do make the centralised AI incumbents look silly. Much like how Celium prices destroy Coreweave prices etc. Or how Hippius prices destroy Dropbox prices. Or how cheap Metanova is doing drug discovery for etc etc. Don't let Bittensor purism cloud your judgement. The big boys don't really give a shit if your current edge is subsidised by emissions. But if it is, make sure you have a clear route to ween off and migrate to non-subsidised revenue... Here's an answer that impressed me the other week. I was having a cocktail with Nigel from Score. He's a terrific biz operator. Walks the walk. I asked him, "If Bittensor vanished tomorrow...how much would it cost to replace all your miners and how long would it take?" Without blinking an eye or skipping a heart beat, he replied "$***k per month and about 7-14 days." He/they are on the ball. Just like many other subnets are. So the call to action of this post is that you are early, you may have battle scars because you are early, but you are correct in your conviction. Just by holding TAO or alpha is all you need to do. And not be weak-willed with the inevitable inbound tree-shakes... The cherries on the cake will be US interest rates being cut and the FED and/or PBOC doing QE "not QE"... You don't own enough TAO...