What are Bitcoin Runes and why I love them? Bitcoin was originally built to do one thing and one thing only - hold and transfer BTC. But the world wants to do moar with Bitcoin. For example, use it to create, trade and transfer other assets, that aren't necessarily BTC. The talented Mr. Casey Rodarmor created the Runes protocol as a way to "etch" into Bitcoin messages fungible tokens (like ERC20 style). The safety of these Runes isn't guaranteed by Bitcoin's core protocol, but rather relies on indexers to parse and interpret them correctly. The data about Runes isn't screened and verified by Bitcoin miners, which means they don't have the safety of Bitcoin. But nevertheless users do trade in them and find them interesting. Why do I like them? I am a Bitcoin Maxi in the following sense: I want Satoshi's invention to be the infrastructure on which most digital assets of value or based on. I want this to empower humans and increase their freedom. But (!) this requires Bitcoin to allow more economic activities than just hodling and transferring BTC. So Runes is one such activity that, I hope, will lead Bitcoiners to want and do more, like apply an OP_CAT soft fork. THE END.