Bitcoin's fourth halving, which took place in April 2024, was somewhat different from the previous three, as it gave the ecosystem a gift that ultimately became a new trend in the entire crypto market. This gift was the concept of BTC rune coins, which primarily came out to incentivize Bitcoin miners.

A little over a month passed, and the rune coins' surpassed $1.4 billion in their combined market cap. If you don't know what the rune coin concept is or how this frenzy went through and its future, then this article is for you.

What on Earth are Rune Coins?

Rune coin is a new token standard for minting or etching meme coins within the BTC ecosystem using the Runes Protocol that was launched on the day of halving, i.e., April 20, 2024. These meme coins are also known as Bitcoin runes or rune coins. Some of the popular BTC runes minted so far include DOG, RSIC or Runecoin, and EPIC.

What is DOG?

DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, or simply DOG, was the first BTC meme coin etched using the Runes protocol. It was airdropped to Runestone wallet holders four days after the Bitcoin halving, i.e., April 24, 2024. The airdrop amount per wallet holder was 889,806 DOG coins.

The total supply of this memecoin is 100 billion, and all of it is in circulation in the market. This makes the coin's total market cap stand at over $760 million at press time. This is indeed huge for a meme coin that was released just one and a half months ago.

What is Runecoin?

Another popular meme coin in the Bitcoin ecosystem is RSIC or Runecoin. The full name of the coin is RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE. It has a total supply of 21 billion tokens, which shows a resemblance to Bitcoin's 21 million token supply.

Officially, it was the 8th rune etched and airdropped to holders. Each holder got 888 satoshis worth of Runecoin as an airdrop. Just like DOG, Runecoin's token supply is also fully available on the market. This makes its market cap stand at over $230 million at press time.

What is EPIC?

EPIC’s full name is EPIC•EPIC•EPIC•EPIC. It was the third meme coin to catch the crypto audience's attention after DOG and Runecoin. Unlike the first two, EPIC has a total supply of just 1 billion tokens, which makes its total market cap stand at over $60 million at press time.

What is COOK?

Last but not least is COOK•THE•MEMPOOL, or simply COOK. This BTC rune has just recently been etched via the Runes protocol, with a total supply of 21 billion, which is the same as that of Runecoin and BTC. Out of this, 442 million tokens are currently in market circulation. COOK is officially the 37th rune in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

What's the Future Potential of BTC Runes?

The spike in the total market cap of already released rune coins shows that crypto users are taking an interest in these meme coins, thanks to their attachment to the market king, Bitcoin. As more and more runes are etched, this market cap is expected to rise further, leading the BTC ecosystem to expand.

In the short term, these coins will definitely stay relevant, especially until the post-halving hype is over. However, their significance might eventually fade away in the long term, as they have no real-life use case as memecoins.

Apart from that, the more BTC runes are released in the market, the lesser the demand would be for the old ones, as all of them follow the same etching protocol with no innovation or major distinction to compete against each other or other popular memecoins in the market like SHIB, DOGE, or PEPE.

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*This article does not contain any investment advice.

The Rise of Rune Coins: How Bitcoin's New Concept Surpassed $1.4 Billion Market Cap