Every bull-bear cycle in the Bitcoin ecosystem has been brutal. I’ve had the fortune to live through them all, and the same sensations have resurfaced each time. The ecosystem is very different than the rest, it’s more “curated.” By that, I mean it’s less crowded than the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems, both for NFTs and for tokens. For tokens, even going back to BRC-20, the runners were known from the start. When attention came, those runners performed and reached multi-billion dollar market caps. Naturally, many new BRC-20s were minted trying to ride the wave of attention, but in reality, if you held your initial runners ($ORDI and $SATS), you were going to be fine. It was quite easy to make a profit, even though for months it felt like you were screaming into the void. With Ordinals, it was the same. In 2023 and 2024, we knew exactly who the runners were at any given time, and whenever attention returned to the ecosystem, those runners performed. In the pre-Runes era, the pattern repeated. RSIC was airdropped and kicked off a pre-Runes mania. The runners were easy to spot: alongside RSIC, attention was focused on Runestone (later $DOG), $PUPS, and $WZRD (later $MIM). For memecoins, those last four, when attention cycled back to Bitcoin in October–November 2024, the runners were known. Add to that list one that emerged in June: $BILLY, which built a holder base and volume over several months. What happened? 20x gains across the board. So what’s the point of this post? The Bitcoin ecosystem has an “easy mode” (which is also the painful part): having exposure to the runners. But it is easy mode, because you know who the runners are. There isn’t a bucket with 100 potential tokens to choose from. There was a recent post by someone (not a CT influencer) who hadn’t bought Ordinals or Runes in the last couple of years, mentioning how active and present the communities are. That’s your signal that this ecosystem doesn’t disappear. Since 2023, these bull-bear cycles have been brutal, but the ecosystem has continued to build and upgrade through it all. That’s why, with every new attention cycle, collections and tokens go even higher than the last.