The respite provided by the debut of memecoins on the Bitcoin blockchain that helped to soften the financial blow of a recent software update to crypto miners already appears to be fading. Just as the April 19 “halving” reduced the amount of tokens awarded to miners for validating transactions, network transaction fees jumped as users rushed to mint the speculative coins on Bitcoin for the first time. The process is enabled by the Rune protocol, through which people can create their own fungible tokens. Dune Analytics’ data shows that the total transactions in Runes dropped to around 45,700 on Monday from its peak at ... (full story)