The cryptocurrency sector witnessed significant developments this week, marked by the launch of the Bitcoin Runes protocol, which generated over $135 million in transaction fees within its first week. This new protocol, leveraging the Bitcoin UTXO model and OP_RETURN opcode, has been developed by Casey Rodarmor, who also created the Ordinals protocol. In parallel, the crypto market saw Bitcoin trading above $64K, although the overall market capitalization slightly dipped by 0.10% to $2.48 trillion. The Ethereum NFT market also showed signs of vigor, with notable increases in floor prices, particularly for BAYC, which surged up to 16 ETH. Additionally, Stripe announced its plan to support USDC payments this summer, further integrating crypto payments into mainstream financial services.