Author: Cookie, BlockBeats
Ordinals is dead, this is one of the most popular memes of Ordinals. Since the advent of runes, this meme has developed into Runes is dead and the famous "Casey hara-kiri".
Since its launch, Rune has always performed poorly. Currently, the total market value of Rune will remain above $1 billion. This is the famous "Casey seppuku line", and we are back to the old place. In the past 5 days, the total transaction volume of the Rune market has been only a pitiful $2 million or even lower. Due to restrictions on ticker naming, a total of only about 87,500 Rune tokens have been "etched (deployed)" since the launch at the end of April.
In comparison, more than 640,000 meme tokens have been deployed on Solana since April 1st of this year. Not to mention the trading volume, the top 30 meme tokens in Solana's past 24-hour trading volume can single-handedly challenge the entire rune.
The summer solstice has passed, but the "Runes Summer" that foreigners call for has not yet arrived.
In the eyes of many Chinese degens, Rune is simply a typical "CJB" - isn't it said that foreigners have a consensus? Don't Chinese and foreigners accept each other? Foreigners are just thundering without raining, and they are the first to pull down...
In fact, I think this statement is a cognitive trap. Runes are indeed a consensus among foreigners at the Ordinals FT protocol level, but the Ordinals community itself is very small, and if you further subdivide it into the group of foreign rune players, it is even smaller. In contrast, during last year's rune craze, almost all players in the Chinese community participated, and the Chinese community has truly experienced it and reached a consensus - the rune track can make money.
This is actually a one-sided confrontation, the majority of Chinese degen VS the minority of foreign degen.
Runes cannot take off. On the one hand, the current market has entered a relatively flat or even sluggish stage. On the other hand, the Bitcoin ecosystem, or the Ordinals ecosystem and even the Rune ecosystem, is still a small circle in the entire Crypto circle.
The total number of Rune Holders is less than 730,000, and the number of people who have played Rune is only a little over 480,000. Excluding the situation where one person controls multiple addresses, the actual number of independent players is even pitifully small.
Rune has no shortage of good, sexy meme tokens. EPIC•EPIC•EPIC•EPIC, which just completed its airdrop, can be called the Bitcoin version of $PEOPLE. Many Ordinals projects, communities and even individuals, led by the Blob team, raised 33.3 Bitcoins to bid for the fourth "Epic Satoshi" produced in this year's halving. After "etching (deploying)" this rune on it, it was airdropped to over 90,000 addresses for free.
This story of gathering the power of the ecosystem and giving back to the ecosystem is sexy enough. However, the cognitive threshold also exists objectively. Bitcoin has been regarded as "currency" or "virtual gold" for so many years. Since the birth of Ordinals, there have been constant controversies surrounding the Ordinals ecosystem. At the same time, many Crypto players still think of Bitcoin as "currency" - Bitcoin? Oh, yes, it's expensive. If you can't make a fortune by investing in Bitcoin, I won't play it.
The existence of this impression has made it necessary for the spread of the story that a group of Bitcoin believers bought a "Satoshi", the smallest unit of Bitcoin, at a price of 33.3 Bitcoins to actively break through the circle in order to be heard by more people. Many people first do not know what "rare Satoshi" is, and secondly, they may be confused after hearing this story and fail to appreciate the charm of this story.
I must say that no cryptocurrency can have such cultural attributes. We cannot see a certain ETH on Ethereum with a value 3.33 billion times greater than itself. Moreover, there is no precedent for buying a "rare satoshi" with 33.3 bitcoins. This means that a group of Bitcoin culture enthusiasts are using 33.3 bitcoins to seek an answer - if 33.3 bitcoins equal to 1 satoshi proves the cultural value of Bitcoin, then can these 33.3 bitcoins create greater value?
Previously, the BRC-20 version of $PUPS was bridged to Solana and caused a surge and sensation, which was a very good start. After $PUPS, I observed that the communication between the Solana ecosystem and the Ordinals ecosystem became much closer. The most direct feeling was that the two NFT series of Bitcoin Puppets and OMB had many buyers from Solana.
Selling or skyrocketing prices can certainly bring a lot of attention and new users to an ecosystem in the short term, but in order to keep them, the ecosystem must be infectious, vibe, and have its own moving stories and even culture. After the birth of Ordinals, Bitcoin has gradually developed from a "value medium" to a "cultural medium". In other words, Bitcoin itself is a kind of culture. It has stood firm for so many years, but has never relied on various application narratives until today, which has proved that it is the currency of our generation and the accumulation of a generation's beliefs.
What does the growth of runes require? First, I think we need a bridge from runes to other chains. Such infrastructure is being built by RuneMine, Beyond, and MultiBit. I think the day when we have a rune bridge is not far away.
In my opinion, liquidity is secondary. What’s more important is to bring the stories of Runes and Ordinals ecosystem to users of other chains, let them see that Bitcoin has excellent native memes and moving native stories, and let everyone update their impression of Bitcoin. Just as young people rarely buy gold but instead speculate on shoes, game accessories, and NFTs, Bitcoin is also young now.
We need a Bitcoin Renaissance. We need to challenge the public's old impressions of Bitcoin and let more people begin to appreciate the cultural diversity of Bitcoin.