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8 April 2024 · Block Height 838300 · Bitcoin Price $69K
Welcome back to the Blockspace Newsletter!
We’ve got a bit more data on the pre-Runes activity. Let’s break out the measuring sticks and see just how big this Runes market can get!
Quick Hits
Bhutan to upgrade Himalayan mining to 600MW+
Mara pool wins +12% above expected fees per block in past 30 days
Bitcoin “Layer 2” AINN achieves over $600m TVL
A Paraguayan bill could outlaw mining, staking
Chart of the Week
Daily Inscription Volume tapering off (but still increasing)
Runes are now 10% of the NFT marketcap
Everyone and their dog is launching a “pre-Rune” in anticipation of the official Runes launch on the Bitcoin halving. For the uninitiated, pre-Runes are either Inscriptions/Ordinals or another token such as BRC20 which is expected to be converted to a Runes token post-launch (it’s an IOU).
And these pre-Runes are trading like hotcakes
Ordinals trader FarmerJoe have identified over $310 million in trading volume for the 3 leading pre-Runes projects. This is about a third of the total Ordinals marketplace volume (~$1.2 billion) since the first pre-Runes launched in February.
According to the site RunesMarketCap.com, we can see that there is currently over $519 million in pre-Runes market capitalization. This is close to 10% of the entire NFT market cap of $6.2 billion.
Traders & influencers are taking notice, in particular the $PUPS token. Last Friday, memecoin whisperer Ansem bought the ticker on a livestream to 120k+ viewers and sent the price of $PUPS on Solana from $3 → $120. Because PUPS trades both as a BRC-20 and a token on Solana, this created a massive arbitrage opportunity to buy PUPS on Bitcoin and bridge to Solana (both PUPS on Solana & BRC-20 will be converted to PUPS Runes). We expect to see many more arbitrage scenarios like this as the ecosystem tooling is still rather primitive.
If that wasn’t speculative enough, we now have synthetic pre-Runes allocations marketplaces now providing price discovery. Whales Market allows users to convert their accumulated RSIC tokens to a contract on Solana, creating a sort of (and please try not to laugh) — a sort of “synthetic pre-Runes accumulated IOU marketplace.” Expect more Bitcoin degening in the near future, especially as Solana-natives look at Bitcoin as a playground.
Want more Runes & Bitcoin Halving coverage? Sub to Bitcoin Season 2!
Links we liked
Resources: Ordinals + Runes resources from Barbra
Blockspace Podcasts
🎙️Solana, What’s Right and What’s Wrong
(YouTube) Eugene Chen, co-founder of Ellipsis Labs, discusses the future of decentralized finance, Solana's vision for transforming traditional finance, and how Phenix aims to redefine on-chain trading. He also shares insights on the Ethereum vs. Solana debate and the challenges of optimizing blockchains for Defi applications.
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