The market value of Runes approaches one billion US dollars, but lacks growth momentum in recent times.
The Runes protocol was launched on April 20th during the Bitcoin halving event. It has been one month since its release, and there are now nearly 70,000 Rune tokens with a total market value of approximately $920 million. However, the market is dominated by a few leading projects, such as DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, which has a higher market value.
Runes protocol has been online for a month now, and its total market value is currently around $934 million. To put this into perspective, the current market value of Bitcoin is approximately $1.3 trillion, Ethereum is around $370 billion, and BRC20 tokens are around $2 billion. It is evident that the Rune market is still very small.
Interestingly, the developer of the Runes protocol, Casey, jokingly stated that if the market value did not reach $1 billion within a month of its launch, he would commit seppuku. The current highest market value of the protocol is around $998.6 million, so it seems that Casey’s prediction was almost accurate.
Casey is confident in the Runes protocol.
However, compared to the rapid increase in market value to $900 million within a few days of its launch, there has been no further growth in the past month. The overall market value has remained relatively stable, indicating a lack of vitality and narrative in the market.
Looking at individual projects, the top-ranking project is DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, issued by the Runestone team, with a market value of approximately $257 million. The second and third rankings are PUPS•WORLD•PEACE with a market value of $159 million and RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE with a market value of $158 million.
It is worth noting that the top three projects account for 61% of the total market value of all 70,000 Rune tokens. This is because, apart from a few projects with market values exceeding tens of millions, most projects have little to no market value, resulting in a concentrated market.
Most Runes are meme coins, so they heavily rely on the current market environment and sentiment. After the Bitcoin halving event, the ecosystem, including Ordinals, BRC20, and BTC Layer, seems to have also gone through a period of stagnation, lacking a strong growth momentum, which seems to have also affected the development of the Runes protocol.
Meme coins have the advantage of experiencing sudden explosive growth at any time. Perhaps, waiting for the market to drive new stories, we may see new Rune projects rise rapidly, just like the unpredictable meme development path of the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems.
Fundamentally, Rune tokens may be the next economic focus of the Bitcoin ecosystem’s development and their long-term application value is also very interesting.
