The BRC-20 token PUPS recently experienced a significant 40% drop in the past 24 hours, bringing its market cap down to $348 million. Despite this decrease, trading activity remains high with a volume of $42.2 million, showing a 6.10% decrease from the previous day.

PUPS reached its peak price of $95.02 on April 13, which is 53.5% higher than its current price. Its lowest recorded price was $0.03513 on Jan. 26, with the token’s value surging over 125,000% since then. In the past week, PUPS has risen by 18.4%, outperforming the general crypto market by 12.3% and surpassing similar meme coins, which are down by 27.1%.

According to Magic Eden, the Ordinals collection Bitcoin Puppets currently has a floor of 0.37 BTC, equivalent to $23,000. The transition to Runes is scheduled for later this month, coinciding with the Bitcoin halving event and the launch of the new Runes protocol.

Negative price movement follows a 1,056% surge in the PUPS token last week in anticipation of these events. Despite claims by its supporters and the official Pups website branding it as the first meme coin on Bitcoin (BTC), there has been controversy, with others pointing to earlier projects like MEME as pioneers.

As described by Xverse Wallet in its recent guide, Runes are designed as a fungible token alternative to the BRC-20 standard, aiming to minimize network congestion by discouraging unnecessary UTXOs accumulation. Platforms like Magic Eden and BitX are facilitating the trading and launching of Rune-related tokens.

The Runes protocol, known for its minimal on-chain footprint, is set to enhance Bitcoin’s functionality by integrating its UTXO model directly into Bitcoin Layer 1, contrasting with the more congestive BRC-20 tokens derived from Ordinal Theory.