The historic Bitcoin halving on April 20 coincided with the launch of the Runes token standard by Casey Rodarmor, the renowned developer who previously introduced the Ordinal protocols on the Bitcoin network.
Runes has significantly driven the mining revenue for Bitcoin miners. In the first week since its launch, Runes has generated transaction fees of more than 2,129 BTC, equivalent to $135 million.
Runes can be used to create fungible tokens such as memecoins. According to Dune analytics, Runes transactions have dominated the network activity, clocking 3 million transactions since its introduction. On Thursday, for example, the share of Runes transactions was 45% of all Bitcoin transactions while regular transactions accounted for 51%.
Unisat data reveals 13,240 Runes tokens have been minted so far, driving demand for network blockspace and transaction fees. The average transaction fee on the Bitcoin network was around $40 on Thursday, significantly higher than $5 at the start of April.
Among the Runes tokens, “DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON” is priced at 7.5 sats and has a market cap of 7,499.96 BTC, equivalent to over $477 million. The 1-day trading volume of this token was 99.969122 BTC worth approximately $6.4 million. Magic Eden data revealed.
Last month, NFT marketplace Magic Eden, which has supported Bitcoin Ordinals since its launch in 2023, announced its decision to extend its support to Runes, too. With the official launch of the Runes token standard at the 840,000 block coinciding with the Bitcoin halving, Magic Eden launched a beta version of the Runes trading platform.
