TL; DR
Full story
Damn, what’s going on with Bitcoin now?
Activity on the chain has recently exploded, with miners raking in as much as $80 million in transaction fees last weekend alone.
So what was it? (The halving?)
No! They were Runes, which took a key feature of Ethereum and added it to Bitcoin.
Confused? This is what we’re talking about:
All cryptocurrencies are just software.
Previously, if you wanted to start a brand new cryptocurrency/token, you had to write your own software (or copy/paste someone else’s).
Then Ethereum came along and said:
“Hey, we’ve created a system that allows you to piggyback on our software and network. All you have to do is tell us what you want to call your token, how many tokens you want to generate, and we’ll host it (process transactions for a fee).”
Suddenly, new tokens were popping up left, right and center (this was known as the ‘ICO boom’) – and every time these tokens were traded, they increased the value of the Ethereum network.
Runes does that for Bitcoin – allowing users to launch their own tokens on the Bitcoin network.
That wouldn’t be anything special if it wasn’t Bitcoin (most new blockchain projects allow users to add their own tokens to the network – it’s not a rarity!).
BUT!
Since Bitcoin holds the most value ($1.3T at the time of writing), it incentivizes people to create tokens on the network, in an attempt to transfer some of that value into their newly created token.
…and stimulated they have been!
Our guess is that this $80 million fee is just the beginning of a new boom for Bitcoin.
