Runes: A Comprehensive Guide

How to start buying, trading, and selling runes

Runes are here, and they’ve brought the fun of shitcoins to Bitcoin. Let’s look at how to buy, sell, and trade runes. I’ll also share a bit about how I trade runes, what I look out for, red flags, and all that good stuff.

k. Let’s get it 🤙

Okay. So what are runes? 🤔

So much happening on runes rn

If you already read my other piece on $DOG vs $RSIC, then feel free to skip this section. If not, here’s a quick rundown of “Why runes?”:

• The Runes protocol was launched by Casey Rodarmor, creator of the ordinals protocol, as a response to domo’s brc-20s. Basically, Casey had never intended for the ordinals protocol to be used with tokens. Folks wanting to trade brc-20s quickly found out that they’re clunky, and they clog up the network.

• So came runes, with a simple yet ingenious design. The protocol takes the op_return code—which anyone can use to insert up to 80 bytes of arbitrary data—and uses that space for runes. That way, there’s no chain bloat, and we get a novel and awesome way to have more fun on Bitcoin 👏

Now that you know the why behind runes, let’s look at a few rune tools.

Rune tools worth a look 👁‍🗨

I like to look at 3 main sites when I’m trading runes. But there are a TON of rune dapps being built rn (e.g., rune swaps and Rune Blaster, which I’ll talk about a bit below). But if I’m not using my node, the main sites I check rn are…

1. Magic Eden

2. Geniidata

3. Luminex 

• Technically, you only need ME. But Geniidata gives you some extra info. There’s also Luminex, which displays the same data differently, so sometimes you can catch something there you might’ve missed.

• Geniidata does a fantastic job of displaying prices from other sites (e.g., Unisat and OKX). ME is usually the clear winner tho.

  

  Geniidata sharing prices

• Geniidata also has an amusing seppuku chart for when Casey said this:

my net worth is in this man’s hands

Here’s what the chart looks like:

• What Luminex does have: You can use Luminex to etch runes if you’ve got a ticker. We’ll cover etching in a separate piece. 

Rune Blaster 🧙‍♂️

Rune Blaster comprises a suite of rune tools. These are powerful tools, which made me take a look at the associated Wizards of Ord collection on Bitcoin.

I like investing in builders, and Lifofifo is a cool builder. The art goes hard as well, so I picked this one up while writing this piece:

The UI for Rune Blaster leaves a lot to be desired, tho, but a closer look does reveal some interesting tools:

• MagicPool shows you rune- and ordinal-specific tx’s that you can snipe.

• If you have any mint batches stuck in the Mempool, you can use the RBF tool to speed it up 👟

• Cancel Transaction is a pretty cool tool, where, say you purchased an ordinal and the collection tanked while the tx is still in the mempool, you can use this tool to cancel it. How cool is that?!

• The Sniper tool is the crown jewel of this suite.

  

  Yes, this is all of it. But you can use it with MagicPool, where it shows you a list of pending tx’s that you can snipe. So, this tool is only meant to be used as a standalone if you have the inscription ID or rune UTXO.

Thoughts on Sniping? 🤔

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have sniping, but we don’t live in that world. So we do the best we can, and arm ourselves with knowledge and tools, and get on with it. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the system we have, at least at present.

Which runes am I looking at rn?

Luminex is pretty cool, but the fees…

• Let me preface this by saying that I am by no means a runes trading expert. In fact, I am very good at losing money. So take what I know, and explore, but none of this is financial advice. Having said that, I do hope you can take something of value from here, and learn, and win 🙏 

• Some things to look at when minting/trading runes, in addition to price:

  • Ticker name. Does the ticker have staying power? Is it funny? Can a culture be established around it? Is it meme-able? How meme-able? Is it cringe? What’s the story behind it? Feel it out.

  • Is there a premine? Did the etcher decide to keep 20% or so to themselves? If so, fuck ‘em. I’m comfortable with anything under 5% because I don’t want to fade opportunities simply due to moral high grounding. That said, fair 0% premines are ideal launches (e.g., $DOG and $BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT).

  • Number of holders. I like anything around 1000 and up. Too few, and you know it’s got a low chance of running (e.g., 100 holders ain’t gonna cut it. You need a wider holder base for pamp potential.)

  • Velocity of mint. Will it mint out quickly? But most importantly: Will it mint out?

  • Are there socials? What does their social game look like? Attention marketing is everything in this space. Can they command it?

Another thing to consider is fees; that is, how much will it cost in fees to mint out the entire supply? Here’s how to calculate it. (Thanks to Jason Borck and his video here.)

Take the total number of lots * the fees at the moment

=

what it would cost to mint out the entire supply rn

This data is available from any of the platforms I’ve mentioned, but I do like Geniidata; they make tracking all this data easy.

Notes:

• The god-tier runes, of course, are $DOG and $RSIC, although currently $DOG appears to be the safer bet. (RSIC’s run is contingent on their promise that they’ll deliver something shortly. In contrast, Leonidas, creator of $DOG, has proven that he knows something about attention marketing.) 

• I also like Billion Dollar Cat, Piggy, and Saiko Hamster. (I am not holding Saiko, tho, but I might buy a bag.)

  

  Bullish on $BILLION•DOLLAR•CAT

  I am currently actively trading runes, and it’s another rune a day. Don’t be discouraged if you missed a rune token’s initial runup; there’s always the next one 🤝

• Make sure your fees are set to high. Snipers be out here 🔫. Ex: I bought $billy early, went to bed, checked a few days later, and realized it got sniped. It has since more than 20X’d. (i.e., Don’t miss the forest for the trees 🌲)

How to split your runes

Let’s talk about why you might want to split them before you sell them.

You want to do this for several reasons, but the most obvious one is that you don’t want to tank your rune token price by dumping a massive bag in one go, say a 30k usd bag. This means you’re hoping one whale comes along to become your exit liquidity.

Sure, that wall doesn’t prevent others from buying up other lots above and under it, but it’s still an inconvenience. In other words, for your convenience, you’re fucking over the community, so be a good person and split your damn runes.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Head to Magic Eden.

2. Connect your wallet.

3. Click the dropdown menu for your wallet on the top-right-hand corner.

4. Click on your “Runes portfolio”.

5. From here, you can select the lot you want to split. Click on “Split”.

6. Figure out how many lots you want to split the main lot into.
   
   Ex:
   
   You have a lot of 1000 Pussy Blaster rune tokens. You want to split them up into 10 lots of 100 each so that the listings are easier to manage for buyers.

7. Once you complete the popup, all you have to do is wait, and you’re good. Your new split lots should appear shortly.

Note: If there are any leftover runes in the split lots, they will be included in the last lot.

Oh lawd these lambo stickers pampin’ ⛽

Mika, ETH player, displaying a clear lack of understanding of runes

Don’t be like Mika, and get yourself some runes. It’s the biggest opportunity in crypto rn. This is like when you missed ordinals, and you won’t stop talking about it. Don’t catch yourself talking about runes and saying the same thing a year from now.

It’s only been a few weeks.

Runes will run. And Casey’s promise of Seppuku if runes don’t hit 1 billion within the first month of launch, well, that’s done now.

Casey a few weeks from now

Next stop: 10 billy, and Casey power level goes over 9000 🤝