The tokens of decentralized AI projects Venice and Morpheus surged following a U.S. 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 the last 24 hours, trading at $16.37 by noon on June 13, 2026. It reached a daily high of $17.66, with trading volume nearly doubling to approximately $130 million. Morpheus (MOR) also saw a significant increase of around 21%, reaching $2.28, with a volume of just under $300,000.
On June 12, 2026, at 5:21 PM Eastern Time, Anthropic received an order to suspend access to the recently launched Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for foreign nationals, both in the U.S. 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 U.S. Department of Commerce.
Anthropic launched Fable 5 on June 9, 2026, as the first publicly available model in the Mythos class. The company claimed it had built in protective restrictions, as the underlying system could identify and exploit software vulnerabilities. Anthropic linked the authorities' concerns to a method of bypassing these restrictions, describing the issue as "narrow" and stated it is working to overturn the decision.
Decentralized projects quickly turned the model shutdown into a marketing opportunity. The Morpheus account on X stated that decentralized AI "has 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 responded to a post about the risk of citizenship checks on AI platforms, saying, "There’s a reason we built Venice."
Voorhees' Venice is marketed as a privacy-focused and censorship-resistant AI platform based on open-source models that are less powerful than Mythos and Fable. Users stake the VVV token for access. Morpheus rewards participants who provide computing power, code, and capital with MOR tokens, branding itself as a community project without a founder.
Anthropic stated it would share additional details within 24 hours and is working to restore access.