Tokens of decentralized AI projects Venice and Morpheus surged following a US export directive requiring Anthropic to restrict foreign access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.
According to CoinGecko, the Venice token (VVV) rose about 14% in 24 hours, trading at $16.37 by noon on June 13, 2026. The daily high reached $17.66, with trading volume increasing nearly 200% to approximately $130 million. Morpheus (MOR) gained around 21% in the same period, reaching $2.28, with a volume just under $300,000.
On June 12, 2026, at 5:21 PM Eastern Time, Anthropic received an order to suspend access to the newly launched Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for foreign nationals both in the US and abroad. To comply, the company disabled both models for all clients while maintaining access to others. The Block, citing Reuters, reported that the directive was issued by the US Department of Commerce.
Anthropic launched Fable 5 on June 9, 2026, as the first publicly available model in the Mythos class. The company claimed to have built-in safety restrictions, as the base system could identify and exploit software vulnerabilities. Anthropic linked the authorities’ concerns to a method of bypassing these restrictions, described the issue as “narrow,” and stated it is working to overturn the decision.
The model’s shutdown was quickly turned into a promotional opportunity by decentralized projects. Morpheus’s account on X stated that decentralized AI “never looked better,” thanked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for the “free advertising,” and expressed “condolences” to users who lost access to the models. Venice founder Erik Voorhees, responding to a post about the risk of citizenship checks on AI platforms, wrote, “There’s a reason we built Venice.”
Voorhees’s Venice is positioned as a privacy-focused, censorship-resistant AI platform based on open-source models that are less powerful than Mythos and Fable. Users stake VVV tokens for access. Morpheus rewards participants with MOR tokens for providing computing power, code, and capital, and describes itself as a community project without a founder.
Anthropic stated it would share additional details within 24 hours and is working to restore access.
