If you are reading crypto Twitter there’s almost zero chance you haven’t encountered Bitcoin Runes. The shilling is relentless.

Runes is the advanced version of the BRC-20 standard that we covered in Alphaverse last year. It’s supposed to make shitcoin trading on Bitcoin a reality. Think Uniswap-like trading.

“Supposed” is important here. The standard is new and it’s not guaranteed to work well. Plus, Bitcoin being a proof of work slow chain is notorious for MEV. In other words, for the first several days (weeks) things are going to be clunky, and sophisticated players will extract the most value.

Still, the tech is promising. After all, trading shitcoins on the mother chain with the largest market cap is nothing to sleep on. Here’s a chart from Franklin Templeton (a prominent TradFi firm):

The current Runes niche is tiny despite strong pumps of the leading tokens, such as PUPS and WZRD. And, despite the risks, many are still bullish. The bullishness is so strong that people think WZRD’s team staged FUD to buy their own project’s tokens for cheap before Runes goes live.

Runes will go live shortly after Bitcoin halving, which is going to happen today. The fees will spike and the Runes Wild West will start. There already are tools to create Runes in one click, so the number of new tokens will be tremendous.

The golden opportunity here is in minting new Runes, similar to BRC-20s back in the day. Get yourself an Xverse wallet and use Luminex to mint new Runes.

The list of new Runes will be on the left. The minting workbench is on the right.

After someone launches yet another Rune, you should be able to see it in Luminex. Then, you can start minting if you think it’s worth it. 

The best way to mint new Runes fast is to use split UTXOs. Don’t think about the name, don’t think about how it works. If you’re going to mint Runes, use this tool to split them.

I have slightly over 4.5 million sats (fractions of BTC). I can split them into 500,000 batches to then mint Runes with those batches potentially faster than others. For the fees select “FAST”.

Once trading starts and you’ve minted some Runes, you’ll need to sell them somewhere. I think Magic Eden will have the best user experience.

The hardest part is finding good Runes. I think the best strategy is to monitor Luminex for new listings, and then look up the names of the new Runes on Twitter. If you spot a Twitter account with a solid following or a potentially viral meme, it might be the reason to pull the trigger.

The last thing to say is that you should be well aware of the fact that MEV pros will take advantage of you. You might still make some good flips, but they will ultimately benefit the most. 

If you experience issues or unexpected outcomes during minting or trading, don’t fret. Just make sure you don’t do this with large amounts early on so that you don’t lose much if anything goes wrong. 

 

That’s it for today!

Anton,
Head of Research