Bitcoin Runes, a new protocol for minting fungible tokens on Bitcoin, lived up to its hype upon launch, at least initially. But are Runes a passing fad, or could they herald a new future for Bitcoin and its transaction volumes?
The launch of Runes coincided with a historic shift post-halving. Miners earned more from transaction fees in a day than block rewards for the first time. On launch day alone, miners made $80.74 million through fees, significantly surpassing the $26.28 million from block rewards.
Runes tokens are attached to Bitcoin’s UTXOs (Unspent Transaction Outputs) rather than individual satoshis, potentially enabling their future integration with the Lightning Network or other Bitcoin L2 solutions.
The rapid popularity of Runes has largely driven the skyrocketing fees.
Within just two hours of going live, the network saw around 53,000 Rune-related transactions, significantly boosting normal network traffic and pushing average transaction fees to nearly $130, more than double the peak seen during the last bull market.
Despite the initial frenzy, Rune transaction volumes and fees have since normalized.
Shortly after launch, Rune transaction volumes dropped to around 30% of all Bitcoin activity, and high-priority transaction fees fell to around $11. Udi Wertheimer believes that while the initial success of Runes might elevate other former Rune tokens like Runestones, Prometheans, PUPS, and WZRD—considered strong candidates for future CEX listings—this momentum might take longer to kick off than expected.
Looking ahead, it might be wise to hold top Ordinals like Bitcoin Puppets, NodeMonkees, and Stonks, as their market position could make them potential recipients of future Rune airdrops. While Bitcoin DeFi, NFTs, and L2 are likely to remain hot topics this cycle, the best move for now might be to watch Runes, especially their performance in the coming weeks.
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