Key Points

• Bittensor is adapting to channel more value to its most productive ecosystem projects, and less to its laggards.

• Pump.fun is trying to fend off the latest new entrant to its market.

• Only one of these coins is worth buying right now.

• 10 stocks we like better than Bittensor ›

I’m adding to my Bittensor (CRYPTO: TAO) position this September. I’ll also be sure to steer clear of Pump.fun (CRYPTO: PUMP), even though it’s considerably more tempting than it used to be. Both coins have a lot of momentum at the moment. Bittensor gained 21% in the 30-day period ending on Sept. 10, 2026, whereas Pump.fun climbed by 41% in the same window.

One of the reasons I’m interested in one instead of the other is that their potential as long-term investments differs significantly. The difference comes down to whether the activity is paid for by customers or by the token itself.

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Bittensor is in the AI services market at precisely the right time

Bittensor is a bit of a complicated cryptocurrency, in part because it uses some different terminology than other networks.

The blockchain is a web of independent subnets, which are competing third-party marketplaces that sell artificial intelligence (AI) services such as computing power and inference, among many others. Each subnet’s miners provide the raw computing power for the services offered, and the subnet’s validators grade what the miners produce to determine whether it meets the criteria for getting paid. Payments are in the form of TAO, which the main chain regularly issues, and then distributes to subnets in proportion to the market price of each subnet’s token, which is a proxy for how much capital is backing it.

The network issues around 3,600 TAO daily, which is worth close to $316 million annually at its current price near $241. Per an analysis by PANews in March 2026, the chain’s total revenue from customers was between $3 million and $15 million annually. So most of the on-chain activity on subnets right now is being subsidized by Bittensor itself. It isn’t the product of a viable and self-sustaining ecosystem of services that are meeting external demand.

That’s changing now, which is why I’m interested in accumulating this coin for the first time.

Its V440 upgrade in August throttles new TAO issuance to subnets that fall below an average share of demand. The result will be that the most productive subnets will get a larger share of value than before. This would enable them to scale faster by offering better incentives to miners to participate and perhaps also enabling them to drive their costs to users down. Plus, holders will be subsidizing far less of the unproductive tail. This could help attract more discerning investors, potentially including financial institutions, from the sidelines.

Why I am choosing to avoid a coin with a good supply policy

Pump.fun is a meme coin launchpad on Solana. It charges users fees for each coin they launch from its platform, spending half of its net fee revenue on buying back its own token and then burning it.

Those burns have returned $354 million to its holders since the token’s debut in 2025, and in the throes of speculative enthusiasm in the crypto market, like now, Pump.fun is very likely to continue reducing its circulating supply at a rapid clip. In August alone, it repurchased and burned more than $27 million of its coin.

I will be avoiding any purchase of Pump.fun.

One reason for that is that it has a shallow economic moat for its business. That’s a problem because quite a few different coin launchpads have started operating during this summer alone. One of those newcomers, Pons, is a meme coin launchpad on Robinhood Markets‘ new Robinhood Chain. It collected $96 million in transaction fees over the 30-day period ending on Sept. 10, just under twice what Pump.fun alone collected over the same window.

Pons may or may not pose an ongoing competitive threat to Pump.fun, but for now, it’s stealing from Pump.fun’s share of the demand for launching meme coins.

The point here is that crypto launchpads come and go all the time, and the winner of the moment is usually not able to retain the top spot for more than a few quarters at the very most. That makes it hard to be enthusiastic about making an investment in them for the long term.

So, I don’t suggest buying the coin.

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Alex Carchidi has positions in Bittensor, Pons, and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bittensor and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.