Bitcoin is no longer boring or out of the reach of retail; it’s fun and exciting and ready to kickstart a new era of innovation. For years, Bitcoin has been regarded as a store of value—a means to preserve capital. This meant using the Bitcoin blockchain to buy BTC and then moving it to cold storage, forgetting all about the world’s largest network. 

As a result, while Ethereum, Solana, and other blockchains have been bustling with activity, raking in billions of dollars in fees, the Bitcoin blockchain has remained relatively dormant, with little fun, activity, fees, or innovation—save for its rising prices. And as a trillion-dollar asset class, most retail can’t even think of getting into BTC.

But now the tide is changing, and for the first time, Bitcoin is ready to experience all that and more. This will not only attract more people, encourage adoption, and encourage innovation but also help the Bitcoin blockchain find a solution to the issue of its network security. 

This new era of change is being ushered in by Runes, which helped Bitcoin miners rake in a record $107 million in revenue in a single day. This helped alleviate the concerns around halving’s impact on miner revenue and Bitcoin’s ‘long-term security budget.’ 

Even the legacy institutions are noticing this surge of activity on Bitcoin, with Bernstein analysts stating: 

“Bitcoin is experiencing a ‘Defi summer’ like a moment that Ethereum did back in 2020, where multiple decentralized apps and tokens were launched on the Ethereum blockchain, leading to splurge of liquidity and transaction fees.”

Bernstein is not the only one either; Franklin Templeton has also noted a “renaissance in activity” on Bitcoin.

Launched alongside Bitcoin halving this past month, there has been a lot of excitement surrounding Runes. This is pretty evident in the Bitcoin average transaction fee, which has been flatlining but revived with the launch of the Runes protocol. At the beginning of this month, the fees were around $5, but surged past $128 for the first time ever on April 20, according to YCharts. With that, total transaction fees hit a record high of $80 million. 

The protocol itself has already seen 1.9 million in transactions and generated 1,366 BTC in fees, as per the data provided by Dune Analytics. Data by NFT Pulse meanwhile reveals Bitcoin to be the top chain in terms of trading revenue. 

A new era for Bitcoin

It all started with Ordinals, which allows users to embed data into the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals have been a gigantic success, with over 66 million Ordinal inscriptions created since 2022, generating over 6,777 BTC (worth $450.8 mln) in fees, according to Dune Analytics.

Of course, things can always be better, and so came Runes, also created by Ordinals developer Casey Rodarmor. What Runes does is make use of Bitcoin’s Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTX) and store data in the transactions’s OP_RETURN field. In contrast, the current Bitcoin token standard BRC-20s is less efficient and  can clog up the network. 

This means Rune maintains all the data on-chain while being cheaper and more network-efficient than previous standards. This way, Runes can offer a more secure platform to launch fungible token projects such as meme coins and make transactions. 

Already, retail is having fun with Bitcoin, with hundreds of tokens launched in less than a week. Also, the Runes ecosystem has grown to include DEXs, NFT marketplaces, launchpads, exchanges, lending protocols, explorers, analytics, and Rune-focused projects. Even centralized exchanges like OKX and Gate.io have jumped in, listing some of these newly minted runes. This goes on to show just how, over time, it will lead to a vast and vibrant ecosystem surrounding Bitcoin.

All of this is while the whole experience of creating and speculating on NFTs and meme coins on Bitcoin isn’t even seamless yet. As the tech and user experience gets better and people realize the true potential of Runes, this growth will only accelerate even further. 

So, this is just the beginning, which means the project may see a drop in price, activity, and fees in the short term. As we can already see, the fee is back at $32. However, in the long term, once the hype cools down, it will drive a real frenzy of ingenuity, integrations, and utility. Soon, Runes will be a billion-dollar ecosystem, leading to new blockchain capabilities and renewed excitement.

All this enthusiasm, accessibility, and technological superiority will see Rune changing the landscape of Bitcoin. It does need more legitimate gamefi, defi, and overall infrastructure in place. The top 10 Runes by Market Cap are memes and we will see this change over the next few months.

Overall, Bitcoin’s vast potential has been dormant until now, but with Runes, BTC is ready to realize all these possibilities. The base layer has already spent the last decade establishing itself as a secure and robust blockchain. Now, retail will get to access Bitcoin again and experience its enormous value, which will take it to new heights.