Venice Tokens and Morpheus Rise After US Restrictions on Anthropic

Tokens of decentralized AI projects Venice and Morpheus surged following the US government’s export directive requiring Anthropic to restrict foreign nationals' access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.

According to CoinGecko, over the past 24 hours, Venice token (VVV) increased by about 14% and was trading at $16.37 by noon on June 13, 2026. The daily high reached $17.66, trading volume increased by nearly 200% — approximately $130 million. Morpheus (MOR) also rose about 21% during the same period, reaching $2.28, with a trading volume 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 US and outside. To comply, the company disabled both models for all users while maintaining access to others. The Block, citing Reuters, reports that the directive was issued by the US Department of Commerce.

Anthropic launched Fable 5 on June 9, 2026, as the first publicly available Mythos-class model. The company claimed to have built protective restrictions into it, as the underlying system is capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in software. Anthropic linked government concerns to methods of bypassing these restrictions, called the issue “narrow,” and stated that it is working to overturn the decision.

Decentralized projects immediately turned the model shutdown into advertising. Morpheus’s account on X wrote that decentralized AI “has never looked better,” thanked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for “free advertising,” and expressed “condolences” to users who lost access to the models. Venice founder Eric Vurhis, replying to a post about citizenship verification risks on AI platforms, said: “There’s a reason we built Venice.”

Vurhis’s Venice is positioned as a privacy-focused, censorship-resistant AI platform based on open-source models, which are less powerful than Mythos and Fable. Users stake the VVV token to access it. Morpheus rewards participants who provide computing power, code, and capital with MOR tokens and describes itself as a community project without a founder.

Anthropic stated it will share additional details within 24 hours and is working to restore access.