THORChain RUNE

What RUNE actually is on-chain

Another asset tracked on this site also uses the ticker RUNE: Rune (Solana, 9fAT1f…pump). These are unrelated tokens with separate contracts, separate supply and separate price histories — a price alert set on one of them says nothing about the others, and a ticker search is not enough to tell them apart.

For RUNE the project publishes a whitepaper, a public source repository and an active account as @thorchain. Both a written specification and readable code exist, which is a materially higher bar than most assets in this size range clear. None of it is a quality judgement about the asset; it is simply what can be independently checked before the chart is worth looking at.

Where RUNE sits in the market

#188 places THORChain in the upper mid-cap band. Liquidity is already fragmented at this depth: a large share of real RUNE volume can sit on two or three venues, so a quote on a secondary exchange may lag the primary market by seconds and by more than a basis point. Position size matters more than entry timing here.

CryptoPingAi is currently streaming 4 live RUNE order books (Binance, Gate.io, MEXC, HTX). That is coverage in line with a #188 ranking: enough books to cross-check a quote, few enough that one of them can dominate price formation for hours at a time. None of the books we see for RUNE are regulated US or Korean venues, so this is an offshore-quoted asset — availability, and the price itself, depend on which jurisdiction you trade from.

RUNE against its all-time high

More than 95% separates RUNE from its all-time high of $20.87 (on 2021-05-19) — a 29.8x recovery. At that distance the high stops working as a reference at all; it belongs to a different supply structure, a different holder base and typically a different cycle. What carries information for RUNE now is the downside, so read the range section below before this one. It was set 5 years ago. A reference that old says more about the cycle it belongs to than about the asset as it trades now.

RUNE across its historical range

RUNE has traded across a 2,452x range, between $0.00851264 and $20.87. Any volatility figure quoted for this asset depends heavily on which part of that range it is measured over.

Spot is about 82.3x above the all-time low of $0.00851264 (on 2019-09-28) — a substantial recovery, but one where a meaningful share of the holder base still has a cost basis within the visible range rather than far beneath it.

RUNE supply structure

Of a capped 360.1 million RUNE, 350.5 million is circulating — 97.3% issued, with 9.6 million still to be created. The remaining issuance is small enough that emission is a second-order influence on price, but the schedule still matters for anyone modelling multi-year supply.

What kind of asset RUNE is

THORChain is a decentralised exchange token. The economics are unusually legible for crypto: the protocol generates fees from trading volume, and the token's value proposition rests on whether it captures any of them. Volume on the underlying venue, the fee switch status and competitive pressure from other venues are the variables that actually matter — and DEX volume is itself highly cyclical, so revenue is not a stable base.

CoinGecko files RUNE under 10 categories, including Decentralized Exchange (DEX), Infrastructure, Exchange-based Tokens, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Layer 1 (L1). Worth flagging from the metadata: RUNE appears in the Multicoin Capital portfolio.

How to set a THORChain alert that is worth receiving

THORChain (RUNE) — quoted on 4 venues we stream — high dated 2021-05-19 — rank #188. On this profile the condition that carries signal is thresholds anchored to the recent range rather than to the all-time high.

Full alert-design method: thresholds, RSI/MACD and volume conditions →