Tokens tied to decentralized AI projects experienced significant gains following the U.S. government's action against Anthropic. According to reports from The Block, Venice's VVV token climbed about 13% over 24 hours to $16.37 by Saturday afternoon, with a 24-hour high of $17.66. Trading volume jumped nearly 200% to roughly $130 million, while Morpheus's MOR rose about 21% to $2.28* over the same period, though on significantly lower volume of just under $300,000. However, recent developments show VVV has fallen 15% in the past day due to significant selling pressure from top traders and whales, particularly on Binance where the Long/Short Ratio has dropped to 0.6, indicating sellers dominate despite buyer activity.
The catalyst for the rally was a federal export-control directive issued at 5:21 p.m. ET Friday to Anthropic to suspend access to its recently launched Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for any foreign national, inside or outside the U.S. As reported by The Block, a U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that the Commerce Department issued the directive. Anthropic complied by disabling both models for all customers, while leaving its other models running. The company described the order as a misunderstanding it is working to reverse. The US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models just three days after their launch, citing export controls.
Backers of decentralized AI projects seized on the shutdown as validation of their censorship-resistant pitch. According to The Block, the official Morpheus account posted that decentralized AI "never looked better," thanked Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei for the "free publicity," and offered "condolences" to users knocked out of their workflow, blaming "government overreach." Venice founder Erik Voorhees responded to a post arguing the directive's overlooked consequence may be that AI platforms will have to verify users' citizenship, writing "There's a reason we built Venice." This event underscores growing investor interest in AI platforms resistant to regulatory shutdowns.
Anthropic launched Fable 5 on June 9 as the first publicly available model in its "Mythos-class" tier, shipping it with built-in safeguards because the underlying system is capable enough to find and exploit software flaws. As reported by The Block, the company said the government's concern centers on a method of bypassing those guardrails, calling it a narrow issue that other models share. Anthropic said it would share more details within 24 hours and is trying to restore access, leaving open how durable Friday's "permissionless" rally turns out to be. The company described the order as a misunderstanding it is working to reverse.
