Revisiting RUNE | Why it's a Staple in My Crypto Portfolio

Thorchain (RUNE) has become a staple in my crypto portfolio. It all started back when @shanghaipreneur, @jk6276, @nealmcspadden and a few other authors on LEO were talking about RUNE. Back then, RUNE was a mere $0.20ish. I hadn't yet bought any but they kept talking about it.

These were some of my favorite authors on LEO and they tended to have a pretty level-headed approach to investing. When they all started talking about Thorchain seemingly all at once, I became intrigued.

I started diving into the thesis of Thorchain. I discovered what the protocol was intended to be some day. I really loved the overall idea: a cross-chain DEX that would be the final authority in seizing massive volume from Centralized Exchanges and moving it all to L1 swaps (Layer 1 Swaps).

To me, this was fascinating. As someone who held (and still holds) a massive amount of my Bitcoin as Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), I love the idea of L1 swapping and L1 saving. L1 collateralized loans takes it yet another step forward.

Back in the day, Thorchain was just an idea. Then we saw chaosnet. As Chaosnet progressed, I continued to get more and more bullish on Thorchain. I bought much of my RUNE bag under $1 but I continued to buy well beyond that into the $3-5 range. After that, the bull market was underway and I saw RUNE pump all the way to $20... I had a huge bag of RUNE.

In fact, RUNE had become my #1 altcoin position. Almost exclusive. Outside of ETH, HIVE and LEO, RUNE was pretty much the extent of my altcoin exposure. I started to clean up my portfolio and sell off anything that wasn't BTC, ETH, RUNE, HIVE or LEO.

RUNE simply took the cake of being the most exciting altcoin with an amazing team, vision and execution. The tokenomics are the cherry on top. I wrote extensively about Deterministic Value, the Incentive Pendulum, general discussion about RUNE and also read up on LEO authors like JK who wrote as well.

Thorchain Then vs. Now

I put up this tweet yesterday to announce that in some spare time, I am writing a lengthy investment thesis on RUNE. RUNE has become one of my biggest crypto positions over the years and I am incredibly fascinated while being deeply invested in the project.

I believe that Thorchain will reach a $25B Market Cap in the next bull run. Currently, RUNE is at a $593B market cap, so this is nearly a 50x in the price of RUNE.

It might sound crazy but this is truly where I believe RUNE will run in the next cycle. The crypto space - primarily through Bitcoin - is about to see inflows unlike any other cycle we've ever experienced.

The institutions are coming and they are bringing unbelievable liquidity, attention and market actions with them. When this occurs, Thorchain (RUNE) will be one of the largest beneficiaries.

The last time RUNE was $1.6 in the last cycle, streaming swaps did not exist. Savers did not exist. Collateralized lending did not exist.

The community has gotten larger. RUNE has spread to more hands. The protocol has gotten infinitely better. BSC was just integrated... more chains continue to get integrated. More liquidity has gotten added.

The protocol, project and community has done nothing but improve since the last cycle. Where did RUNE land the last cycle? It topped out at a ~$5B market cap. This is 1/5th of the market cap that I believe we'll see in the next cycle.

At $5B, RUNE was nearly $20. At $25B, the RUNE price will be ~$75.

Streaming Swaps

One of my core counterarguments for Thorchain's success as a protocol was liquidity. I say was as in that was an issue in the past but one singular development literally fixed the #1 barrier to adoption for Thorchain... it's called Streaming Swaps.

I wrote a short post titled Thorchain's Streaming Swap Feature is a Nail in the Coffin for Centralized Exchanges when the feature was released about 3 months ago. Streaming swaps have completely changed the game for Thorchain. With Streaming Swaps, I've seen multi-million dollar trades move through Thorchain and it's cheaper than it would've been on a Centralized Exchange.

Yes... a DEX is cheaper than a CEX. This is revolutionary.

On any other DEX, slippage will destroy the chances of any sizable trade being cheaper than a CEX. Prior to Streaming Swaps on Thorchain, I don't think it was feasible to trade with size on any DEX for major players. I'm talking about people who move multi-million dollar trades like they are nothing.

Thorchain just put a nail in the coffin for CEXes with this feature. At the same time, they solved the one major thing that I think held back the protocol from mass adoption: slippage in low liquidity pools.

There was a massive trade the other day where $227k ATOM was sold into $231k BTC. This pool only has $1.25M in it... on any other protocol, this trade would have 20%+ slippage, easily. On Thorchain, it went through without a hitch and with basically no slippage. You can see below that it was 830 swaps broken out into 1 swap every 3 blocks.

This is truly a work of art... on-chain, native assets being swapped with less slippage/fees than CEXes. It's incredible.

Between streaming swaps, collateralized lending and single-sided staking, I believe Thorchain has solved the liquidity issues from a tech perspective. Now it's simply a matter of marketing, onboarding liquidity and onboarding traders.

All 3 of these things happen from the Thorchain community... and they are powerful at it. But that'll be a topic for another article.

Needless to say, I own a lot of RUNE. That stack of RUNE continues to grow and I continue to get more bullish about the protocol. I recently started writing a lengthy thesis paper about RUNE and why I believe it will hit a $25B market cap in the next cycle and I'll be sharing bits and pieces of it while I write in posts on INLEO each day. Additionally, when the full paper is ready, I'll share some more insight on my own RUNE buying and why I believe this project is a 50x+ in this next bull cycle.

Stay tuned.

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