BTC miners have sold a significant amount this year, and their total reserves have reached new lows. Ordinals had a significant positive impact on miner revenues last year. Despite low prices, miners turned high transaction fees from ordinals into an opportunity to stay afloat, but now they are selling due to declining revenues as interest wanes.
Bitcoin Runes Transactions Decline
Dune Analytics data shows the number of Runes transactions on the Bitcoin network is rapidly declining. Between June 22 and 28, an average of 37,820 transactions occurred. This figure was 331,040 daily average at the beginning of June. The 90% drop in Runes transactions indicates a significant loss of interest.
On June 24, the total number of transactions in the protocol fell to 23,238. This was the first time such a low number was seen since the halving date of April 20. Last week, these transactions accounted for 4.9% to 11.1% of all Bitcoin network transactions.
Bitcoin Runes
The loss of interest in the Runes protocol cannot be underestimated for Bitcoin. Runes contributed less than 2 Bitcoins to miner fees in the last six days. On the record day of April 24, this figure was 884 BTC. This decline in miner revenue is not favorable for the bulls. Fees from Ordinals inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens also fell during the same period, indicating this is not unique to the Runes protocol.
This innovation, launched by Ordinals inventor Casey Rodarmor on April 20, was expected to create hype similar to last year’s BRC-20. The negative sentiment in the overall market may have overshadowed this. Runes allowed for the creation of tokens on the Bitcoin network much more easily than the BRC-20 token standard and alternative solutions. At least, this was the claim made by Casey and the community.
Both the mining difficulty for Bitcoin is decreasing, and we see that the transaction fees, which should support miners, are eroding. As previously mentioned, miner reserves have fallen to 1.9 million, the lowest point in the last 14 years. Considering that miners were continuously accumulating in 2014 and did not reach the 1.9 figure suddenly, we can better understand why this low is historically significant.
