The BRC-20 token PUPS experienced a significant drop of about 40% in the past 24 hours and is now at a market cap of $348 million.

Despite the recent plunge, trading activity remains high with a volume of $42.2 million, though this marks a decrease of 6.10% from the previous day, according to data from CoinGecko.

PUPS reached its peak price of $95.02 on April 13, 53.5% higher than its current price. Its lowest recorded price was $0.03513 on Jan. 26. Since then, the token’s value has surged by over 125,000%.

Over the past week, PUPS has risen by 18.4%, outperforming the general crypto market, which saw a decrease of 12.3%. It also surpassed 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, or $23,000.

“Migrating to [Runes], which is far more decentralized than BRC-20, feels like the Bitcoin way,” said a Pups spokesperson.

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 comes as the PUPS token skyrocketed by 1,056% 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 some 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. Runes aims to minimize network congestion by discouraging the accumulation of unnecessary UTXOs. The initiative is gaining traction, with platforms like Magic Eden and BitX facilitating the trading and launching of Rune-related tokens.

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