LeoAlpha: Thorchain (RUNE) - Tracking the Opportunities and Future of Multi-Chain Swaps

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Welcome to the first LeoAlpha post. ICYMI, I wrote about this idea I have for generating more Alpha for everyone here on LeoFinance. We have a unique collective brainpower on this platform that we can leverage to evaluate new projects in the crypto space and discover and disseminate great ideas.

Our platform and community are so uniquely positioned to generate and share Alpha with each other. That Alpha leads back into value amongst all of our community members which in turn raises the average wealth of LeoFinance community members.

A higher average wealth of our community members = a higher potential value on our community's own tokens. You see where I'm going with this. Sharing Alpha on LeoFinance can be both a selfish and selfless act when done this way. I'm excited to see it unfold.

The goal of these #LeoAlpha posts are to get LeoFinance authors involved in a research process to generate ideas and write content about a specific project that might lead to some Alpha. Think of this as being like a research division within LeoFinance. We find an idea, start with some key topics and then pull the thread as a community to see where it leads us. See below for details on how to write a LeoAlpha post and link to it for extra curation. Read more about this idea in my post from yesterday LeoAlpha: A New Series.


Thorchain (RUNE) - Still The Underdog in an Emerging DEX Environment

What better way to kick off the LeoAlpha series than talking about one of the best performing trades this community has ever seen: RUNE.

If you go back to early 2020, the talks of RUNE began. @shanghaipreneur was the first to bring it to the community and then other members like @jk6276 started picking up on RUNE and talking about the future it could provide.

Back then, RUNE was trading somewhere between $0.10 and $0.40. Today, RUNE is trading at $8.40.

The run for RUNE is far from over in my opinion. In fact, back then the trade was highly risky: Thorchain barely had any working product. They had a vision, they had a team and they had an emerging community of hardcore believers in the project.

Much like the early days of BTC vs. today, the risk profile of RUNE is far lower now than in its infant stages. You may have less upside now that RUNE is above $8 vs. $0.40, but that doesn't mean you don't have a lot of upside. You've traded in a lot of the risk of early stage investing for some of that upside.

Key Metrics: What I'm Watching

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In my opinion (and I think in the opinion of many others who are watching Thorchain), RUNE is absolutely undervalued.

We're living in a world where CEXs like Coinbase and Binance are being heavily scrutinized by regulators. The hammer is dropping on major Centralized Exchanges and they can only outrun the suits for so long.

With this in mind, cross-chain decentralized exchanges are the future. How will we trade BTC for ETH or BTC for LEO or BTC for CUB? How will value transfer from one chain to another in a permissionless, decentralized way?

Right now, there is only one truly decentralized protocol that supports 5+ major blockchains. It allows you to permissionlessly move assets across various chains and its "competition" is non-existent.

So if Thorchain is to fulfill this mission, how big should its market cap be?

First, you may want to look at the cross-chain volume that is out there right now. Looking at how much value is transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain, the Ethereum blockchain, Litecoin, Solana, BEP2, etc. etc.

Then consider a future where Thorchain captures a % of that market.. Does it capture 5%? Does it capture 20%?

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I think we can all agree that a $1.8B market cap and rank #65 for the only project that has a working decentralized, cross-chain protocol for native BTC, ETH, LTC, etc. is severely undervalued.

Research Points

So the structure of LeoAlpha (at least, in this first post as we all are learning this on the fly) is as follows:

I (or whoever wants to host a #LeoAlpha post) will publish some overview information on something we're watching. It might be a small-cap project on Hive or a small-cap token that just launched on BSC. Or it could be something like RUNE - a major emerging player in the crypto industry.

We start with an overview and then we deliver some broad research points.

Then it's up to you - the writers in LeoFinance - to research the project using those points (or other points if you create them yourself). We all dive into the project deeper together, consider if there is some Alpha to be gained by putting together our collective knowledge and then making our own investment choices based on what we all collectively learn about the project.

  • Market Cap of Thorchain - how does it compare to other "similar" protocols (closest protocols being things like Uniswap/Sushiswap even though they aren't cross-chain)
  • Research the Thorchain network (https://thorchain.org/) - how does it work, what are the key points to know about its technology?
  • The Thorchain team - who's behind Thorchain, what's their involvement? How decentralized is Thorchain?
  • Platforms on Thorchain - there are dozens of apps being built by independent teams. This could be considered bullish for RUNE itself as it captures value from all of these apps - which are the most exciting ones and how could they lead to value for RUNE?
  • Research & identify the TAM (Total Addressable Market) for Thorchain - I mentioned briefly that Thorchain solves one of the biggest issues in all of crypto: transferring value permissionlessly across major blockchains. How big is this market? What can you learn about researching value transfers in crypto?
  • How are CEXes performing? How much of that market will Thorchain eat up as the CEXes like Binance close to certain markets due to regulation?
  • ...

Links to help you in your research:

Research, Report & Earn

I'll be giving out massive upvotes in LEO from my accounts + massive HIVE Upvotes from @leo.voter to anyone that follows the LeoAlpha guidelines to generate some research and publish a post on https://leofinance.io.

The guidelines are very open and I'll curate any research articles based on my subjective view of their quality:

  1. Research and write a Post about RUNE (Thorchain) on LeoFinance.io
  2. Insert a link anywhere in your article back to this article you're reading now - link
  3. Leave a comment below with a link to your article so I can find it easily

Bonus points: find other articles about RUNE (Thorchain) on LeoFinance.io and include relevant links in your post. This helps with cross-linking, readability and SEO.

What's the Point of LeoAlpha?

Consider the purpose behind LeoAlpha as you research and write: our goal is to create high quality research-based articles about various cryptocurrencies and topics in the industry that serve two primary purposes:

  1. Generate Alpha for the LeoFinance community - spreading awareness about opportunities to create a high-powered return
  2. Generate high quality articles for the LeoFinance platform - evergreen content that will rank well on Google and on Social Media

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



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25 comments
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Thanks for the great iniciative, some times we do not have enought time to give our investigate to the comunity but if we have a great incentive we, we could do our homework with a big quality.
we hope with the informatión colected here, could get the oportunity to enter in the market in the first stage, and get the oportunity to grown together.
well shiba inu was a big invest oportunity, same to rune i lose rune and i remember when always read about it, but i say i prefer hive or the old steem, but when the time pass, and we see the development we say, what the fuck? i lost a big oportunity, but as our friend taskmaster say we always have a oportunity daily.
we need to find it, and this proyect could help a lot.
Best regard.

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There’s a lot of opportunity out there in crypto! Leofinance has the unique opportunity to collectively gather around this LeoAlpha idea and discover/research potential opportunities/trades as a community.

I’ve been relentlessly buying RUNE for 6 months+.. I think it will be one of the largest players in the entire DeFi space and is extremely undervalued here even at $8.40

Posted using LeoFinance Mobile

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I Like the LeoAlpha thingy, I will make my research on both LeoAlpha and RUNE, then make a post about it.

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I’m excited for the opportunity to create a “decentralized research division” within LeoFinance. A tag and place where we can gather to spitball and research ideas to generate Alpha for our whole community.

Looking forward to your post! Make sure to drop a link in here so I can curate it!

Posted using LeoFinance Mobile

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Let me get to work on the research now. Thank for the opportunity to be apart of it.

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Paraphrasing the Matrix: "You can't be told how awesome THORchain is...you have to use it for yourself."

I think that holds true in the sense that, even though I had read a lot about it, I didn't really appreciate how awesome THORchain was until I actually used it. When I traded some BUSD for BTC sent directly to my hardware wallet, without using a centralized exchange or having to KYC or trust a third party to allow me to withdraw it, it was actually kind of magical.

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1000% I couldn’t put it any better… it’s a magical feeling when you do your first swap.. the native BTC lands in your hardware wallet - or whatever wallet you choose. I’ve even sent BTC directly into CEXes via Thorswap like the Cash App when moving BUSD or something into spendable USD.

It leaves you with a sense of “wait, that’s it?”

Posted using LeoFinance Mobile

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Great post Khal. Here's the exact problem I have whenever I try to access articles on Leofinance. I have been a proponent of using search functionality through the use of tags. Many users have published many great articles on Rune on Leofinance. I am looking for a guidance article that could help me navigate thor ecosystem to stake my Rune. I still don't know how to stake native Rune. Or how to bridge BEP 20 Rune to native Rune. I know I can google it and find a right article to guide me. But, it would be super helpful if we have that search functionality with right tags. Leofinance is getting there with tags but we may want to use our tags more efficiently.

I don't know what I wrote right there :) You are the owner and you have to take brunt on anything. Hopefully this new initiative will help streamline articles.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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I appreciate that feedback: search is huge and we’ve actually got search already built into the LeoFinance mobile app that will be released this month.

It’s an exciting time.. the search feature will also be migrated to Desktop in the near future!

Posted using LeoFinance Mobile

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i still havnt changed my BEP rune for native rune, and/or staked anything yet. Had it for ages. Would definitely be great to be able to access lots of informative info and tutorial material here on leo!

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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As I know it is not possible to stake Rune, the only way is to provide LP, and you can use only one coin like Rune to provide LP. but you need wait till Thorchain open the time window for people to provide LP.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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Good to see you doing this with LeoAlpha. Remember that the point of good token economies is that you have to align the inherent greed of individuals with what's best for the collective. In other words, you can't change people, so make sure that their behavior accrues value to the token!

$RUNE was the first token economy I saw do this. $LUNA was the second. Let's work together with LeoAlpha to find the 3rd, 4th, 5th... etc.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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no conozco leoAlpha pero pinta bien lo poco que observo va permitir descentralizar leofinance y.colocarlaen la cima.

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The LeoAlpha should bring valuable information and opportunities to the surface for any Leo Finance members that want to invest in emerging projects. We all do our hustle in different ways and places, so bringing it all together should benefit the entire community and expand it to those looking for such "gems".

We all can vouch that we did investments based on Leo Finance sharing, so Leo Alpha should take that to a new level. Thrilled to see the first "unknown" treasure that will be brought to this space!

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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This seems like a great project can’t wait to expand my knowledge on it. This is my first time encountering Alpha. Thanks for this post.

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It is actually 100% because of you guys introducing me to Rune at 0.40 when I got in (not heavy enough as always, but hey who cares) and I still have not seen the magnitude of what it is capable to do, but realizing it more and more every day as you can read in the replies above here as well.

I am happy and even more curious to see what will happen in the future. Not even pricewise, but in general how this will be build in everywhere and used everywhere

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Interesting project that will make us more aware of what's happening in the cryptosphhere overall(currently lacking) through homemade discoveries and delicious incentives. Nice!

Will keep an eye on it and make my own attempts. Double nice!

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