"The elephant dances", why can Runestone's market value exceed BAYC?

The strength of the Bitcoin ecosystem Runes protocol has been significantly reflected in Runestone.

Recently, the floor price of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), once the king of NFT, once fell below 12 Ethereum (ETH). Although it is currently struggling to stand above 12ETH, it has lost its position as the second NFT in terms of market value.

According to Coingecko data, Runestone's floor price climbed to 0.065 Bitcoin (BTC), equivalent to about $4,505, an increase of 33.2% in 24 hours. This jump has brought Runestone's market value to $506 million, surpassing BAYC's $411 million, becoming the second largest project in the NFT market.

Compared to the rise of BAYC, the market value of Runestone has grown rapidly. One month ago today, Runestone, which had not yet released an airdrop, was extremely popular on the OTC platform Whales Market. Even though both buyers and sellers needed to double stake, its market value had reached 143 million US dollars at that time, and the transaction price was around 1,300 US dollars.

Related reading: "Over-the-counter price of $1,300, can Runestone become the top meme of the Bitcoin ecosystem? 》

Runestone has seen a 3.5-fold price surge from $1,300 to $4,505 in one month. Although such an increase may not be surprising in a currency circle full of legends of getting rich quickly, it is particularly significant considering that the total number of Runestones is 110,000. Compared with the total number of 10,000 of common NFT projects, Runestone has been issued ten times as much, and it runs on the Bitcoin network, which has relatively high transaction fees. Against this backdrop, the growth of Runestone's liquidity and market value can be described as "elephant dancing."

Runes Protocol Super Expectations

Why did Runestone's market value surpass BAYC this month? Perhaps the main driving force comes from the Runes protocol's strong performance that exceeded market expectations.

It is expected that the Runes protocol will be officially launched on the mainnet later this month as the Bitcoin halving event approaches. As the "singularity" of the Bitcoin ecosystem's "big bang", Casey's influence is unmatched in the entire Bitcoin ecosystem, and the Runes protocol itself has a strong consensus. The Runes protocol itself carries a strong consensus foundation, and as this consensus continues to strengthen, the increase in asset value has become a market consensus.

In order to prevent the first Rune from being snatched away or pre-mined by VC or project parties, Casey decided to hard-code the first 10 Runes (Rune 0 - Rune 9) into the Runes protocol, and only support open mint, so that everyone can participate fairly.

However, not everyone can eat the first wave of crabs, and the threshold for actually participating in the Runes protocol Mint is not low. Similar to the early days of the Ordinals protocol, the Runes protocol requires users to build a full Bitcoin node to participate in the new minting process, which is a very high threshold for most ordinary users. Therefore, for those users who want to join the Runes protocol but face a high threshold, investing in assets that already have a certain consensus and influence, such as Runestone, has become a cost-effective option.

Therefore, as the halving is getting closer, the trading volume and price of Runes concept NFTs are generally rising. As of the time of writing, according to magiceden data, Four of the top ten Bitcoin NFTs in terms of trading volume, including Runestone, are Runes concept.

In fact, Runestone is not benchmarked against BAYC

Although Runestone's market value exceeds BAYC, Runestone is not benchmarked against BAYC.

According to Runestone founder Ordinals developer Leonidas on social media, after the token swap, Runestone's goal is simple: to create the world's top memecoin on the world's top blockchain. Runestone's MEME coin code and supply will be determined by the community, and it does not necessarily need to be related to the Runestone theme. The design concept is completely open.

"Everyone mistakenly regards Runestone as an NFT collection, but within a month, everyone will regard Runestone as Memecoin. If a random pre-sale Memecoin can soar to a market value of $1 billion overnight, imagine what Memecoin on the Bitcoin chain can do." Leonidas wrote on social media.

Obviously, Runestone's competitors are not NFT projects such as BAYC, but top Meme coins such as DogeCoin, Shiba Inu and PEPE.

Compare the market value of some of the top Meme coins on the market today-DogeCoin has a market value of $28 billion, Shib has a market value of $16 billion, and PEPE has a market value of $2.9 billion. Although Runestone's current market value of $500 million has surpassed the former NFT leader BAYC, it still has a way to go to become a top Meme coin.

As for whether Runestone will stand firm in the front and back rounds of many Runes assets or be "defeated" after the Runes protocol is launched on the mainnet, it will take some time to verify.

A new development recently announced by Leonidas is that Runestone NFT holders will have the opportunity to receive three rounds of Runes Memecoin airdrops, later this month, later this year, and "when we become the world's top Memecoin."

Interestingly, Leonidas revealed that one of the tokens will be related to "dogs", and each Runestone holder will receive an airdrop of Runes "Dogcoin".

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