DIEM by Venice.ai

[internetional]

Venice.ai, a service providing access to various AI models (including the latest uncensored ones), has an interesting token called DIEM.

I can buy one such token, lock it in my wallet, and for as long as it remains locked, receive computational credits (V_CREDITS) worth one dollar per day to spend on LLM API requests. If one dollar a day isn't enough, I can buy and lock two tokens to get two dollars a day for LLM resources. If I need ten dollars a day, I can buy and lock ten tokens.

If I ever stop needing API access, I can simply unlock my Diem tokens and sell them.

I first learned about this token in early January 2026, when it was trading at $250. At that price, the investment would pay for itself in 250 days, assuming daily LLM usage of $1. However, back then, I wasn't spending that much on API access. Besides, attractive alternatives kept popping up: many new services offer a free month or $10-20 in trial credits. In practice, by switching between services, I could get even more access without having to shell out $250.

However, in late January, OpenClaw was released, followed by Hermes, and the resource shortage on free services became a critical issue for many people. Looking at it now, DIEM is already trading at $1,512, meaning the payback period has stretched to over four years. Yet, the price keeps climbing relentlessly. Apparently, many still find this price acceptable, and some even consider it low.



I have to admit: in my 13-year history with cryptocurrencies, DIEM is the first token that makes me say I truly regret a missed opportunity. I regret not buying it the moment I first heard about it.

Nonetheless, not everything about it seems entirely appealing to me. My main question is: who is actually paying for the AI access? I only risk losing the difference between my purchase and sale price, but that loss goes to other traders, not to the owners of Venice. Clearly, that money isn't what pays for the compute! So, where is the money coming from?

[internetional]

On another forum, I found out how DIEM tokens are actually minted. It turns out that to create a new DIEM token, you need to lock up a huge amount of VVV tokens. Currently, it's 756 VVV, which could alternatively be sold on an exchange for $12,200. This means the market price of DIEM is eight times lower than its production cost.

Under these conditions, minting new DIEM tokens is completely unprofitable. This implies that new tokens are unlikely to be entering the market right now. Buyers - those wanting access to AI resources - can only purchase the DIEM tokens that are already in circulation. Demand for these resources is clearly growing, yet there's no room for the supply to expand. So, it's very likely that DIEM's current price levels are far from their peak.

[internetional]

At the moment, 38,370 DIEM have been issued. This means the Venice team must be ready to provide AI resources worth $38,370 every day. However, this is based on retail prices. Does anyone know how much this might cost when buying in bulk from OpenAI, Anthropic, Alibaba, and others? I would like to understand the real scale of Venice's expenses.

[internetional]

I've figured out where Venice gets the money to fund its DIEM token obligations. As it turns out, they have two revenue sources:
- The primary one is user payments. Venice positions itself as a platform for anonymous AI access, so users are willing to pay a premium. This means paying users cover both their own costs and the costs of those who gain access by locking up DIEM.
- The secondary one is the team's allocation of another platform token (VVV). This generates staking rewards, and these tokens can also be sold to cover expenses.

According to the platform's founder, Venice's revenue reached $835,000 in March and is growing at about 15% month-over-month. This means current revenue is not enough to cover all DIEM obligations, which exceed one million dollars per month. However, if revenue continues to grow at this rate, it could be sufficient in just a year.

[tvbcof]

I finally took the plunge into using AI, in no small part because of Venice and because there is significant involvement by Voorhees.  (I was among a minority who, within a short time, became a proponent of Satoshi-Dice.  While thinking that gambling is mainly for 'tards, I saw the the system as a much needed stress-test of Bitcoin back at that time.)  Anyway, AI is somewhat mind-blowing, and the results I am getting are something I find generally reliable for the first time in decades of mainstream goyslop.  In short, I'm a fan so far.

So, it seems that the economics, presumably dreamed up by Voorhees among others, involves two shitcoin-ish things.  VVV and DIEM (the latter no relationship to the defunct Facefuck shitcoin of the same name.)  One does various locking, staking, burning, etc of these things.  And one does it using ETH-based operations on Coinbase's relatively new 'Base' system (as opposed to, say, ETH on ERC-20(?) or 'Tron'.)

This is the first time I have dug into the 'web 3' stuff so I'm just getting it figured out a bit.  I like BTC because it is simple, easy, and obvious.  At least to me.  But anyway, 'if you wanna play, you gotta pay' I suppose.

OK, so the ETH-on-Base operations require a wallet.  Duh.  There are hundreds of them.  Cake seemed match the principles I find appealing in the Bitcoin world, so I got one of those installed, funded, etc.  Sadly, there is some sort of annoying bug on the Venice platform at the moment and I was unable to 'connect' my web-3 wallet to /?/?/? so as to perform more testing.

I also want to figure out the API.  That runs on their HIGHLY ambiguous and poorly documented definition of the string 'credits', and they are also integrating the very interesting x402 which here in the early days seems to be a SOL based thing.  All the more reason to choose carefully a 'web 3' wallet.  But these are outside the scope of the subject of this thread.

If anyone knows of an ANN-type support thread here on bitcointalk revolving around general use of Venice.ai, please let me know.  Else I might start one and see if anyone else is using it.