Less than 0.5% of Runes tokens were successful, highlights analyst

Since the launch of Runes, less than 0.5% of meme coins created using this protocol were “successful.” Guiriba, crypto analyst at Brazilian research firm Paradigma Education, x.com/guiribabrb/status/1784688887740162269″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow noreferrer”>shared on

Guiriba describes that the two most common ways to acquire Runes meme coins are through airdrops delivered to non-fungible token (nft) holders, or by minting them in a “fair drop” model, open to anyone interested.

“In the second category, traders can find meme tickers at low prices, and it all depends on bitcoin fees. An example was SATOSHI NAKAMOTO: 1 mint of 100 tokens cost $300 and the next day it went up to $900. Today they are quoted at $270,” explained Guiriba.

However, only 46 fairly launched tokens captured more than 500 holders, representing only 0.2% of the 20,000 tokens used in the research. The most successful meme coins in this group are “SATOSHI NAKAMOTO” and “FEHU”, which have over $100 million in market capitalization and were the first two tokens to be fairly launched using the Runes protocol.

Runes is a new fungible token standard for the bitcoin ecosystem created by Casey Rodarmor, the developer behind the Ordinals Protocol. It went live in the first block after the bitcoin halving, which occurred in the first hour of April 20.

The Paradigma analyst also tracked airdropped tokens for nft holders, identifying 31 of them. Furthermore, Guiriba highlighted that the price of these nft collections dropped significantly after the airdrop snapshot was announced.

“If we add up the fair-dropped meme coins and airdropped tokens for pre-Runes nft collections, there are only 77 tokens with over 500 holders among over 20,000 projects. This is ~0.4% of the total analyzed.”

Despite the apparent failure of the Runes protocol, Guiriba points out that this protocol is just over a week old and lacks infrastructure and traders. As centralized exchanges list these assets and increase their volume, through liquidity and better interfaces, the number of tokens with more than 500 holders could change.