The race to create one of the first Bitcoin runes is on

With the Bitcoin halving just hours away, the race is on to issue the first tokens for the new Bitcoin Loon protocol, which will be launched alongside the quadrennial event.

Runes is Bitcoin’s new fungible token protocol that allows users to “etch” and mint tokens on the chain. It is similar to the experimental BRC-20 standard released last year, but is said to be more efficient and was created by the inventors of the Ordinals protocol.

In any case, like Ordinals like NFTs before it, the project creators are keen to secure the fastest possible token issuance.

“Collectors and Degen like low numbers,” said Leonidas, an anonymous NFT historian. decryption. “When it comes to inscriptions, some of the most valuable collections have been due to their small numbers.”

As Leonidas explains, the number of inscriptions below 10,000 intuitively conveys that the Ordinals project was in the early stages of the Protocol. Given the emphasis on blockchain-related provenance and the fact that many early NFT and Ordinals projects have benefited from their early stages, creators and traders alike see an opportunity to be first in this anticipated new token protocol.

Runes is a new protocol from Casey Rodarmor, creator of Ordinals. Ordinals allowed the creation of NFT-like “inscriptions” on the Bitcoin network, and the BRC-20 standard built on top of them made fungible tokens possible. Many Bitcoin users see Rune as the next step for Bitcoin tokens.

Similar to first edition books, physical art, and NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Solana Monkey Business, collectors assign value to collectible items based on rarity or age.

As developers look to engrave the first runes, Leonidas expects millions of dollars to be spent to secure these low rune numbers. Runestone, currently the largest Ordinals project by market capitalization (which Leonidas helped create), aims to be one of the projects to secure an early spot for the upcoming meme coin launch.

“Runestone will spend more than $100,000 on a single transaction to secure a low number of Dog meme coins,” he said.

Earlier this month, Leonidas announced that he would be airdropping Dog meme coins to holders of 112,383 Runestone inscriptions following the launch of the Runes protocol.

“Casey created a mechanism similar to runes where they are numbered according to the order in which they were created,” he said. “It’s just a number, so it’s not everything. But it would be really cool if the rune number for the project was low.”

In addition to fighting to engrave the first rune, Bitcoin mining pools are also trying to acquire limited editions of “epic satoshis,” i.e. the smallest unit of Bitcoin (1/100,000,000 BTC).

“According to ‘ordinal number theory’, the first satoshi of a half-life block is called the ‘epic satoshi’.” Blockspace Media Co-Founder Will Foxley said decryption. “It is believed that Ordinals projects that are able to successfully purchase Satoshi and engrave Ordinal on them will have a significant market premium due to the scarcity of the underlying Satoshi.”

According to Luxor Mining Pool CEO Nick Hansen, it depends on not only winning uncommon or huge sits, but also the potential windfall that comes with it.

“For reference, uncommon SATs sell for $200 to $500 depending on market changes. The rare totes we saw could go for up to 3 bitcoins ($193,242),” Hansen said. decryption. “But it’s a logarithmic scale. We think the epic will most likely fetch $4 million to $6 million. This is probably market value.”

Editor: Andrew Hayward