TAO Through the Roof: AI Hype, Viral Subnets & Fortune

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In the glittering realm of digital gold, TAO has risen like a phoenix, soaring 19.19% in a mere day, propelled by the frantic desire for its AI‑infused subnet playgrounds. One might think that the mere whisper of artificial intelligence is enough to send the market into a tizzy, and one would be absolutely right.

The rally arrived hand‑in‑hand with a viral moment from Templar, that most bustling of subnets, while the world suddenly developed a passionate affection for decentralized artificial intelligence tokens, as if they were the newest perfume in Paris.

Subnet Token Demand Drives TAO Price Higher

At the moment of this scribbling, TAO, the mighty token that fuels Bittensor, commands a price of $284.75, a delightful 19.19% rise in just twenty‑four hours.

The reason behind TAO’s ascent is as plain as the nose on a fashionable face. To acquire subnet tokens, one must first possess TAO, and the Templar hysteria has whipped the masses into a buying frenzy, as inevitable as a scandal in high society.

The astute observers at Tao Telegraph remarked that a solitary viral post from Templar was sufficient to send demand for TAO into a tizzy, and they mused that if the same hysteria were to spread across several subnets, the effect would be as spectacular as a fireworks display over the Thames.

Let’s be real, TAO is up because of this viral post by @tplr_ai

To buy tao subnet tokens, investors NEED to own $TAO to exchange into it… there is no way around this.

Hype for one subnet token this week caused TAO demand to rise, just imagine if there is this type of demand…

– TAO Telegraph – Bittensor Media (@taotelegraph) March 14, 2026

Three of TAO’s most illustrious subnets-SN3 Templar, SN4 Targon, and SN39 Basilica-stood among the top eight daily gainers, as reported by the venerable CoinGecko. Meanwhile, TAO itself shattered the $280 barrier, like a daring acrobat leaping over a tall fence.

$TAO breaks above $280 as three of its ecosystem subnets rank among the top 8 daily gainers.

🟢 SN3 – @tplr_ai
🟢 SN4 – @TargonCompute
🟢 SN39 – @basilic_ai

– CoinGecko (@coingecko) March 15, 2026

Templar’s Covenant‑72B Marks AI Milestone

Beneath the fanfare lies a bona fide technical triumph. On March 10, Templar unveiled Covenant‑72B, a Large Language Model boasting 72 billion parameters, pre‑trained in its entirety upon Bittensor’s Subnet 3-a feat as astonishing as a cat walking on a tightrope.

The model consumed roughly 1.1 trillion tokens, wielding nothing more than common internet connections-neither a centralized cluster nor a privileged whitelist was in sight. Indeed, any soul equipped with GPUs could join the fray, as open as a garden gate in spring.

Templar employed a cunning method named SparseLoCo to tame the bandwidth beast. Each participant performed local optimizer steps, then compressed and shared the updates, rendering decentralized training possible at a staggering 72B scale-a marvel worthy of a Victorian spectacle.

We just completed the largest decentralised LLM pre‑training run in history: Covenant‑72B. Permissionless, on Bittensor subnet 3.

72B parameters. ~1.1T tokens. Commodity internet. No centralized cluster. No whitelist. Anyone with GPUs could join or leave freely.

1/n

– templar (@tplr_ai) March 10, 2026

The team declared that Covenant‑72B’s performance rivals that of centralized behemoths such as LLaMA‑2‑70B, a claim as bold as a lion proclaiming itself king of the jungle.

Van de Poppe Rebalances Around TAO Strength

The trader Michael van de Poppe confided that he parted with 10.42 TAO at $288, netting approximately $3,000. He then whisked those proceeds into SEI and EIGEN, whilst retaining nearly half of his portfolio in TAO and NEAR-a strategic shuffle as delicate as a waltz.

“The AI <> Crypto narrative is one of the core angles of the upcoming markets,” wrote Van de Poppe.

He labelled TAO’s movement a 1.8 sigma event on the daily chart, deeming it slightly overextended and thus primed for a brief correction that might present a gracious re‑entry point.

Whether TAO can maintain these lofty heights shall hinge upon the continued vigor of its subnet endeavors and the broader AI sector’s momentum as we march into the forthcoming week.

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2026-03-16 00:21