Franklin Templeton: Runes Protocol Poised to Help Bitcoin Gain Ground on Ethereum and Solana for Fungible Tokens

• Franklin Templeton report says Runes protocol will help Bitcoin "close the gap" with Ethereum and Solana in fungible token market • Runes brings improvements like no junk UTXOs, no need for off-chain data, increased privacy and Lightning compatibility • BRC-20 standard creates network bloat and higher fees due to Bitcoin fragments after transactions • Recent downturn for BRC-20 tokens could be related to more positive sentiment around Runes • Franklin Templeton previously hailed Ordinals as driving a "Bitcoin renaissance"; sees over 1.2 billion crypto users by 2025