Runes is making Bitcoin fun and accessible again

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Bitcoin is no longer boring or out of reach for retail; it’s fun, exciting and ready to usher in a new era of innovation. For years, Bitcoin has been considered a store of value, a means of preserving capital. This meant using the Bitcoin blockchain to purchase Bitcoin and then move it to cold storage, completely forgetting about the largest network in the world.

As a result, while Ethereum, Solana, and other blockchains have been bustling with activity, raking in billions of dollars in fees, the Bitcoin blockchain has remained relatively dormant, with little fun, activity, fees, or innovation, except for its rising prices . . And being a trillion dollar asset class, most retail can’t even think about getting into BTC.

But now the situation is changing and, for the first time, Bitcoin is ready to experience all this and more. This will not only attract more people, encourage adoption and encourage innovation, but also help the Bitcoin blockchain find a solution to its network security problem.

This new era of change is be introduced by the Runeswhich helped Bitcoin miners earn a documentation $107 million in revenue in a single day. This helped ease concerns about the halving’s impact on miners’ revenue and Bitcoin’s “long-term security budget.”

Even traditional institutions are noticing this surge in Bitcoin activity, according to analysts at Bernstein stating:

“Bitcoin is experiencing a ‘Defi summer’, similar to that experienced by Ethereum in 2020, when numerous decentralized tokens and apps were launched on the Ethereum blockchain, resulting in increased liquidity and transaction fees.”

Bernstein isn’t the only one either; Franklin Templeton did it too noticed a “resurgence of activity” on Bitcoin.

Launched alongside the Bitcoin halving last month, there has been a lot of excitement surrounding Runes. This is quite evident in the average Bitcoin transaction fee, which remained flat but picked up with the launch of the Runes protocol. Earlier this month, fees were around $5, but they rose above $128 for the first time on April 20, according to YCharts. With this, total transaction fees reached a record high of $80 million.

Average Bitcoin Transaction Fee | Source: YCharts

The protocol itself has already recorded 1.9 million transactions and generated 1,366 BTC in fees, according to data provided by Dune analysis. Data from NFT Pulse meanwhile reveals that Bitcoin is the leading chain in terms of trading revenue.

A new era for Bitcoin

All started with the Ordinals, which allows users to embed data into the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals have been a gigantic success, with over 66 million Ordinal memberships created since 2022, generating over 6,777 BTC (worth $450.8 million) in fees, according to Dune Analytics.

Of course, things can always get better, and so came Runes, also created by Ordinals developer Casey Rodarmor. What Runes does is use Bitcoin’s Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTX) and store the data in the OP_RETURN field of transactions. In contrast, the current BRC-20s Bitcoin token standard is less efficient and can clog the network.

This means Rune keeps all data on-chain while being cheaper and more network efficient than previous standards. In this way, Runes can offer a more secure platform to launch fungible token projects such as meme coins and make transactions.

Retail is already having fun with Bitcoin, with hundreds of tokens launching in less than a week. Additionally, the Runes ecosystem has grown to include DEXs, NFT marketplaces, launchpads, exchanges, lending protocols, explorers, analytics, and Rune-focused projects. Centralized exchanges like OKX and Gate.io have also chimed in, listing some of these newly minted runes. This continues to show how, over time, it will lead to a vast and vibrant ecosystem surrounding Bitcoin.

All this while the whole experience of creating and speculating on NFTs and meme coins on Bitcoin is not yet seamless. As technology and user experience improve and people realize the true potential of Runes, this growth will only accelerate further.

So, this is just the beginning, which means the project could see a short-term drop in price, activity and fees. As we can already see, the fee is back to $32. However, in the long term, once the hype dies down, a real frenzy of ingenuity, integrations and usefulness will be unleashed. Soon, Runes will be a billion-dollar ecosystem, leading to new blockchain features and renewed excitement.

All this excitement, accessibility and technological superiority will see Rune change the Bitcoin landscape. It needs more legitimate gamefi, defi and general infrastructure. The top 10 runes by market cap are memes and we will see this change in the coming months.

Overall, Bitcoin’s vast potential has remained dormant until now, but with Runes, BTC is poised to realize all these possibilities. The base layer has already spent the last decade establishing itself as a secure and robust blockchain. Now, retail will be able to access Bitcoin again and experience its enormous value, which will take it to new heights.

z3th

z3th is the founder and CEO of Ordz Games, a blockchain-based gaming platform that develops on-chain games based on Bitcoin, GameFi and DePIN. Ordz Games has launched the world’s first web3 gaming device, BitBoy, which allows users to interact with the Bitcoin blockchain and earn Bitcoin rewards. z3th has been in the cryptocurrency industry since 2017 and is a serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience.

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