Sup, nerds!

Here’s what you’re getting in today’s edition:

• 💅 This is cool: Crypto's vital signs are finally back!

• 🔎 This seems important: Don't let this memecoin hopium hook you!

• 🤝 Partner: Become Ungovernable​

• 🔪 Let's dissect this: The Rune Protocol - what you need to know

Terms used in this edition (click for an explanation, or ask Web(GPT)3!):
Web2/3, NFTs, memecoins, bull run.

💅 This is cool:

The Crypto Market’s Vital Signs Are Finally Back

In one sentence: The first big Legacy Corp. x Web3 Company partnership of the cycle was just announced between Adidas and Stepn’ (the app that pays you to exercise).

When checking your overall health, a physician might monitor your:

• Heart Rate

• Blood Pressure

• Ability to dodge throwing darts

(Haven’t heard of that last one? Damn, ok — we might need to find ourselves a new physician).

When checking the crypto market for health, we look for:

• An increase in total market value

• Positive outside investment inflows from venture capital

• Big name partnerships being inked between Web2 & Web3 companies

So far this cycle, we’ve seen the total market value rise significantly, and VC money come pouring back into the space.

But we haven’t seen a rise in Web2 partnerships.

…until today.

The first big Legacy Corp. x Web3 Company partnership of the cycle was just announced between Adidas and Stepn’ (the app that pays you to exercise).

The two are about to launch a series of 1000 NFTs “over a one-year partnership that will see further NFT drops and physical, wearable items on the roadmap," according to Stepn’.

Reading between the lines, we take that statement to mean:

NFT holders will either be gifted, or allowed to purchase limited run Adidas gear at some point in the next year.

Don’t care about exercise or exercise gear?

Neither!

Either way, this partnership is worth celebrating (as a sign of good health for the crypto space).

🥇 Want the news before anyone else?

🔎 This seems important:

Don’t Let This Memecoin Hopium Hook You!

In one sentence: Commentary that touts ‘memecoins have greater potential upside than [well established project]’ is true, but misleading (and can inspire poor investment decisions).

“Memecoins have more potential upside than blue-chip governance tokens, according to VC.”

Catchy headline right? Memecoins outperforming blue-chips? (Impressive!).

Unfortunately, this is just a well disguised (and widely misleading) ‘water is wet’ kinda statement.

It’s a trick we often fell for (for longer than we’d like to admit) when we first started exploring crypto — so we figured we’d let you in on how it’s done, in case you’re in the same boat.

The trick works like this:

Yes, memecoins have more potential upside than blue-chip governance tokens — but…

The lower the total value of a cryptocurrency → the less investment is needed to push it up in price → the greater its ‘potential upside.’

That’s the basic gist ☝️

Now, here’s some real-world context for you:

The memecoin darling of this bull run, dogwifhat ($WIF) has a total market value of around $2.5B right now, while Bitcoin is worth around $1.24T.

Yesterday morning, Bitcoin went from $61.78k to $63.1k, increasing its total value as an asset by ~$20B in the process.

If you had have bought BTC at $61.78k and sold at $63.1k, you would’ve made about a ~2% return on your money.

Had that same $20B of value been added to $WIF’s $2.5B market value, holders would have seen a tidy 700% return.

(Not bad for a Tuesday morning).

“$WIF has a greater potential upside than Bitcoin!”

See how that makes for a catchy headline, but is a widely misleading ‘water is wet’ kinda statement?

Figuring out which of the 2000+ memecoin projects launched each-and-every day are actually going to run up in price?

Now that’s the hard part.

🤝 Partner:

Become Ungovernable.

Phwoar!

Ok, you all seemed to love the Got That Dog In Me and Vitalik Throwback tees…

Let’s see if we can’t go three-for-three, with our Become Ungovernable tee (aka the shirt most requested by our friends n’ family).

🔪 Let's dissect this:

The Rune Protocol - What You Need to Know

In one sentence: The Rune protocol is soon to be released and it promises to be more efficient than Ordinals, and provide more use cases for the Bitcoin blockchain.

Strap in and hold tight, cause we’re about to take the first train directly to Nerd Town.

You’ve probably heard of Ordinals (we’ve written about it a bunch of times).

Ordinals uses the token standard, BRC-20 which just sounds like a bunch of letters and numbers - and it is - but they’re important letters and numbers because they meant that data could be hosted on the Bitcoin network (which many refer to as ‘BTC NFTs’).

Now there’s a new player in town, and they go by the name of ‘Rune.’

To explain how Runes can be more efficient than the BRC-20 standard, we need to explain ‘Unspent Transaction Outputs’ (UTXO’s).

Imagine Seb wanted to send Chevy 5.10 BTC.

Chevy may first ask: “5.1 BTC?? Did you rob a bank??”

After clarifying that he didn’t rob a bank, but he did receive an inheritance, Seb would transfer 5.2BTC because in Seb’s wallet there was 5BTC and 0.2BTC (see the header pic or watch this video for a better understanding).

The ‘change’ Seb receives (0.1BTC minus any fees) would become the UTXO.

And after you’ve done a few trades, you’ll start to get a whooole lot of UTXO’s, each increasing the cost of a transaction, and increasing congestion on the Bitcoin network when being used for trades.

The team behind Runes has come up with a way to solve for that by essentially letting people combine UTXO’s and using a Rune of the exact value looking to be traded instead.

It’s complicated stuff, and we’ll definitely be writing about this again to further explain the use cases for Runes (like the ability to issue fungible tokens like security tokens, stablecoins, and governance tokens, on the Bitcoin blockchain.

For now, we hope you survived, and are ready to get back to the day.

All aboard! 🫡

Rune Protocol Explained