RSIC vs $DOG: The Runes Showdown
RSIC miners came first. Then came Runestones. In this head-to-head showdown, I share my personal experience with runes, and who I think will come out on top 🧐
It’s gotta be one of my best memories in crypto, waking up to check my wallets, only to find 6 RSIC miners sitting there. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew they were mining something. So I bought 2 more when they dipped, and held 8, of which 2 were rare.
Then I watched the price pump all the way to 0.125 $BTC, and I sat and waited as the prices went back down because I was bullish, and I figured the tokens were being mined in the meantime anyway. (Having been in crypto long enough, I also knew that provenance meant something, especially on Bitcoin.)
I ended up selling all my RSIC miners as we neared the halving, but I haven’t sold a single $RSIC token. Full disclosure: I’m also holding $DOG and $PUPS, since it’s best to hedge your bets under conditions of uncertainty.
Btw this piece isn’t a guide on runes. (Transak has a fantastic guide here.) It’s more of a retelling of my personal experience and some thoughts around runes and trading in general, since I think there are some learnings there.
So! Why runes? Let’s take a look 🤙
Why Runes?
Casey Rodarmor fathered the runes protocol. (Yes, the very same man who created the ordinals protocol.) As I understand it, runes were a response to domo launching BRC-20s using the ordinal protocol standard, something it was never designed for.
BRC-20s are fun and all, but they are a pain to manage. More importantly, they clog up the network. Runes, in contrast, use the op_return opcode. op_return allows embedding of up to 80 bytes of arbitrary data, so embedding runes does not affect network congestion in any way.
A simple and clean design.
Now let’s look at RSIC and Runestones 🤝
What is RSIC?
RSIC (Rune-Specific Inscription Circuits) were the first preminers to hit the market. Preminers are a misnomer, btw; preminers are ordinals that have a number attached based on how many runes you’d have been allotted post-Bitcoin halving (i.e., when we hit Block 840,000, which coincided with the runes protocol launch).
So for RSIC, you basically had an ordinal with a counter attached to it, and you could track the amount of tokens mined on a site like Ordiscan. In contrast, for Runestones, each Runestone represented 889,806 DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON runes, which holders received a few days after the runes protocol launched.
Back to RSIC.
In total, 21,000 RSIC miners were airdropped, with a total $RSIC rune token supply of 21,000,000,000. Below are the points that should help $RSIC rune tokens pump, as outlined by Bitcoin degen Pyroshi:
- RSIC started the prerunes meta
- RSIC didn't farm engagement; just shipped
- RSIC spent roughly US$500,000 to inscribe, etch, and airdrop
- RSIC has the #1 Rune holder count (100k+)
- RSIC wasn't based on a forced narrative or meme coin
- RSIC was first to get listed on a real CEX
The RSIC team has been quiet for a minute. They like to build in silence, and let their work speak for themselves. So will there be a Season 2 for RSIC, as was promised? Or is this a one-trick pony?
Let’s see.
Runestones: The fairdrop response
Leonidas is a 🐐. His contributions to the Ordinal space are undeniable, and anyone who says otherwise is mentally challenged. Bro is the dev behind ord.io, and he’s been on a mission to onboard normies to Bitcoin, which has found tremendous success.
Having said that, ngl I did see his response to the RSIC drop as taking unfair shots. His main criticism concerned RSIC not constituting a fair airdrop. RSIC did indeed gamify the airdrop, by rewarding ordinal OGs, while also randomizing certain aspects of it.
The result?
A ton of 🧂 poured on the TL.
Holders, of course, accused non-holders of being the salty ones, aka those who didn’t get the drop. (Fair. If you got it, why would you complain?) But Leonidas shot back: “You know what? We’re going to do a fairdrop. If you traded at least 3 tx’s that are jpegs on Bitcoin in the past year, you qualify.”
Regardless of whether taking a moral high ground was necessary—or even if a high ground was even there to take—is debatable. imo the RSIC drop was fair game. But who was I to complain? If Leo wanted to capture the narrative and work on delivering more airdrops, my door was wide open, and my mouth shut.
So I sat and waited. Happy with my RSIC, I got airdropped 5 Runestones, thanks to Leonidas. I swept 13 more near the bottom, ending up with 18. I sold early, as I am wont to do. (One of the bad habits I’m working on.)
Anyway. $DOG pumped—hard. It’s still pumping, and I’m still accumulating. I really do think Leo is onto something, and you can hate it all you want, but this much is undeniable:
The People love the $DOG 🐕🦺
Prepping for the runes launch
I had wanted a Bitcoin node for a long time. I knew the benefits for the chain: To aid with decentralization by ensuring that another machine stored and kept the on-chain info up to date. But I had a harder time understanding the advantages as an individual user.
Then I saw zk-🦈 and OMB getting into it. That piqued my interest again, and here we are, running an Umbrel. I strongly recommend Umbrel for anyone wanting to run a node, btw. Umbrel makes running a node super-easy and fun, and the user experience is incredible. I have zero affiliation with them. Just legit love the product and the brand (gg Umbrel 🤝)
So as an individual, the advantages for running a node are as follows:
You can etch runes directly, without requiring a third-party app
You can bypass third-party apps entirely, thereby avoiding platform fees, platform loading times, and queues
You can mint runes directly with your node
You familiarize yourself with the technical aspects of Bitcoin
That last point, imo, is the most crucial factor. If that point appeals to you, I strongly recommend that you pick up a node. If you’re a bit more technical and you’ve got some time on your hands, you might want to pick up a Raspberry Pi and some other tidbits to bootstrap a custom node at home.
Post-runes protocol launch
The sea was angry that day, my friends!
I spent 3 bands minting a few dozen runes. (Damn you, fees!) In hindsight, it would’ve been best to sit on my hands and stay liquid, and wait for things to calm down. Then, the smart move would’ve been to sweep $DOG and chill.
Liquidity is king, after all. And sometimes, the hardest thing to do is wait, and sometimes, waiting can pay off like a mfer.
I think it’s crazy—and we should consider ourselves incredibly fortunate—that today we’re able to experience these historic moments live, not just on our own or with friends, but with the creators themselves. This would be akin to chilling in a Discord with Satoshi, Hal, and the homies when Hal first mined Block 9.
And admission is free. Wild.
So do I still use the node? Well, it’s rare for me to log onto my Umbrel now, but I do keep it running 24/7. It costs me next to nothing to help keep the network decentralized, and as a proponent of Bitcoin and financial freedom, I’m more than happy to contribute to the network, even if in this small way.
There’s also the plus of node running having helped pique my more technical interests. I’ve since picked up this book:
Will I actually learn how to program on Bitcoin? Who knows. The book says Python 3 is a prerequisite 😭, so let’s see.
Which Rune to rule them all? 🪐
I like the idea of provenance. I like RSIC. And I hope RSIC wins.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also believe in $DOG. Not because of some fundamental faith I have in the rune token. I just believe in the power of memes, and the way Leo gets behind this, and all the normies he’s bringing onboard with it, it tells me Leo gets it too, and is willing to put the work in.
The proof is in the pudding, after all, and rn the pudding looks like it’s made out of DOG food 🍮 Are we about to eat?
Happy to find out 🤝