The Runes market is roaring back to life.
Once again, naysayers will have to wait at least another hype cycle to proclaim that Runes and Ordinals are dead. Most notably, Runes ($1.89 billion) recently flipped BRC20s ($1.85 billion) in market cap after subsuming $1 billion since the beginning of October. Runes are now the largest token standard on Bitcoin.
Yes, they are all shitcoins – even by my shamelessly apologetic stance towards everything that’s not bitcoin. However, it’s important to note that even within the relatively 1-dimensional category of memecoins, tokens still feature some interesting differentiations between each other, whether it be from a marketing angle or the specific path that each project took to get to this point.
Also, like it or not, these tokens represent serious economic activity on Bitcoin, so we should analyze them from a serious perspective and ask ourselves: what makes this ecosystem tick?
Let’s take a look at a select few that I find most interesting.
Disclosure: I own some of these assets either by airdrop or from minting. They do not represent a material portion of my portfolio, and I strongly advise anyone to solely dollar cost average into bitcoin.
DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON
DOG is arguably the most iconic memecoin on Bitcoin.
Maybe the tryhard, AI-generated puppy wearing a Bitcoin hoodie is too midcurve, but the “Dog Army” is absolutely the most active grassroots community on the Bitcoin side of memecoin Twitter. DOG decidedly leads the whole Runes market, currently twice the market cap ($750 million) of the next largest token, PUPS.
DOG is unofficially led by Leonidas, the first and most dominant “Ordfluencer,” who has coordinated all things DOG since the pre-Runes days. I interviewed Leonidas on Bitcoin Season 2 very early on in the Runes story, and it’s been cool to see the vision he described in June continue to play out. DOG is the first of what may be three different Runes airdrops to holders of the original Runestone inscription. Runestones were the 2nd pre-Rune inscription, where holders were promised an airdrop or claim on a Rune after the protocol launch at the halving.
Today, Leonidas and the DOG community claim that they will not pay listing fees on popular exchanges and that they advocate for portfolio diversity for tokenholders. So far, their grassroots tactics to promote the token are working out pretty well.
CYPHER•GENESIS
In the wake of the AI memecoin frenzy, a single Rune on Bitcoin has captured near total mindshare of this oversaturated trend.
Ordinals OG Bootoshi is well known as the token “AI crypto guy” in Ordinals circles, always testing out LLMs and chat models. Recently he evolved one of his flagship projects into “SatoshiAI,” integrated it into Twitter, and set it free. Of course, an associated token to the account, CYPHER, now exists, and continues to produce gems such as dunking on other Runes AI accounts.
PUPS•WORLD•PEACE
PUPS is one of the more interesting and dynamic stories in Ordinals.
It began with lepuppeteer’s launching the O.P.I.U.M. collection in Spring 2023. OPIUM would eventually be followed by the iconic Bitcoin Puppets collection in the same art style. However, due to the varied community-sourced memes that power the Puppets ecosystem, Ordinals investor FarmerJoe deployed “PUPS” as a BRC20 in the late Spring of 2023.
As BRC20s continued to explode in popularity, the friction of trading the tokens on Bitcoin became a significant barrier to many users. FarmerJoe coordinated a BTC-Solana bridge for the PUPS token, pioneering & popularizing the Bitcoin-Solana bridge meta that now dominates many a token’s go-to-market strategy.
Then in early 2024, as the launch of Runes loomed ahead, FarmerJoe and collaborators announced a Runes migration from the BRC20 standard, but they also revealed that there would be an additional pre-Rune airdropped to Bitcoin Puppets holders. This inscription collection was called Rune Pups, and it guaranteed holders a claim to a future Rune once the protocol launched.
After Runes launched, PUPS token holders existed in multiple different places: as pre-Rune Inscriptions, BRC20s, SPL20 token on Solana, and the unclaimed but reserved PUPS Rune. Over the past year, FarmerJoe & company have coordinated burn and claim events for the BRC20, the pre-Rune Inscription, and the SPL tokens. Notably, during this time, the price of the PUPS Rune declined over 90%, from 419 sats/PUPS to a low of 35sats/PUPS in August 2024. Since the August bottom, PUPS has recovered and surged upwards to become the second largest Rune by market cap on Bitcoin – $357 million at the time of writing.
MEMENTO•MORI
MEMENTO-MORI (MEME) is the only token that Casey Rodarmor, the inventor of both Ordinals and Runes, has ever etched.
Airdropped to Patreon supporters of Casey and Erin’s podcast Hell Money, MEME saw the largest single day trading volume of any Runes token to-date. You could even argue that it resurrected the dead Runes market. But Casey and Erin are clear: this token has no utility, claiming “you should probably get rid of it,” and “this is just a fun project for us with no expectations.” MEMENTO•MORI translates to “remember, you must die,” which is both prescient and poetic for the ultimate end state of memecoins on Bitcoin.
MR•YEN•JAPANESE•BUSINESSMAN
I’m showing my bias here, but this is easily my favorite Twitter account in Runes.
Mr Yen is a fictional character who engages in “legitimate business” and constantly reminds us that he “loves his son.” The Twitter account is highly prolific, constantly posting Mr Yen lore and hype videos, tirelessly reminding us of the wholesome attitude of a reputable Japanese businessman.
The story behind Mr Yen is equally hilarious; apparently, there was an anonymously-run meme account “MrYenJapaneseBusinessman” entirely unrelated to Runes and Ordinals. Of course, someone etched the corresponding Rune and let the owner of the account know this had happened. The Mr Yen account then pivoted entirely to memeing the token even though they had no prior experience in crypto or memecoins.
Have fun, don’t go broke
Remember, these are just fun memecoins, but they are increasingly driving economic activity on Bitcoin. Today Runes alone account for over half of the transactions on Bitcoin, and they are clearly in the driver’s seat for now for next-block fee demand.
