Halving Day Arrives, Excitement Builds Over Runes Launch

Happy Halving Day to all. It has been another volatile 24 hours for crypto markets, with war-related headlines sending risk assets lower overnight. BTC -0.26% briefly dipped below the $60k mark but has since recouped all its losses and is now trading above $64k. ETH -1.23% followed BTC’s initial drop, trading below $2900 last night, but it has now rebounded to above $3000. SOL -4.36% has shown remarkable resilience amid the turmoil, now trading above $145 after briefly falling below $130. Other standout performers today include JTO -6.83% , the native token of Jito Labs—a liquid staking and MEV infrastructure network on Solana—as well as TIA -7.93% , the native token of the data availability layer Celestia, and AR -6.89% , the native token of the storage network Arweave. Meanwhile, traditional markets are mixed, with the tech-heavy QQQ down 1.5% today and the SPX down 0.50%. Yields have moved lower today, likely reflecting a risk-off mentality rather than for inflation-related reasons, as the VIX has climbed back above 18. In just a few hours, the Bitcoin network will undergo its fourth halving, reducing the block rewards from 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC per block—a decrease in the annual inflation rate from roughly 1.8% to 0.9%.