TAO's 100% Pump Meets Covenant AI's Dramatic Exit: 18% Dump Incoming?

Bittensor's TAO token took a nosedive of over 18% in mere hours, undoing its recent 100% rally faster than you can say "wen moon." The spectacular dump comes hot on the heels of Covenant AI making a dramatic exit from Bittensor—the largest operator of several high-emission subnets—citing concerns about, you guessed it, centralization. Because nothing says "decentralization" like centralized control, apparently.

Covenant AI, the proud parent of SN3, SN81 & SN39 subnets, announced its grand departure on April 10. Founder Sam Dare didn't hold back, accusing Bittensor founder Jacob Steeves of running the show while calling the governance setup what it really is: "decentralization theatre." The hits keep coming—suspended emissions to Covenant's subnets, stripped moderation rights, deprecated subnets, large token sales, and allegedly operating what's been described as a "triumvirate" network structure. You can't make this stuff up.

"Jacob Steeves maintains effective control over the triumvirate, resists any meaningful transfer of authority, and deploys changes unilaterally whenever he chooses, without process and without consensus," Dare said, presumably while rage-tweeting into the void. Bold words from someone about to leave the building.

Here's the delicious irony: decentralized, permissionless AI training apparently isn't actually a Bittensor feature. Shocking. Truly, groundbreaking innovation in the space of promising things that aren't quite delivered. It's giving Web2 energy with Web3 marketing.

Dare has reportedly sold all of his subnet holdings—over 37,000 TAO tokens—effectively taking profits while pointing fingers at the centralized boogeyman. That's one way to make an exit. Sell first, philosophize later. We're taking notes.

Despite all this delightful drama, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang previously gave Bittensor a nod after the network successfully decentralized training of a 72B parameter model (Covenant-72B) across distributed nodes. TAO responded by staging a glorious 90% rally following Huang and Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark's comments. Nothing cures governance drama like a Jensen Huang shoutout.

TAO is currently hovering near $263, with a 24-hour low of $262.51 and a high of $341. Trading volume surged 156% as investors rushed to book profits and question their life choices. Classic risk management.

Popular analyst Cheds Trading warns the price risks a deeper drop below the 200-day moving average, potentially sliding toward the 50-DMA at $250. The RSI sits at 41, suggesting there's still room for more downside before we hit "oversold" territory. Fun.

Futures open interest fell nearly 1% to $392.59 million in an hour, with TAO futures OI tanking on OKX, Gate, Bitget, Hyperliquid, and LBank. Binance and Bybit haven't yet shown a correction, but give it time. They always do.

$TAO bleeding. Biggest subnet is leaving. Liquidity dried up. Price descending.

Classic crypto.