THORChain price and where to buy RUNE

What is THORChain?

THORChain lets users swap native assets across blockchains, for example real Bitcoin for real Ether, without wrapped tokens. Every liquidity pool pairs an asset with RUNE, and node operators bond RUNE as security.

How to buy THORChain, step by step

1. Pick an exchange. RUNE is listed on four of the five exchanges we track. Compare fees, funding options and whether it serves your country in our exchange reviews.
2. Create and verify your account. Regulated exchanges ask for identity documents before you can deposit fiat.
3. Fund the account. A bank transfer or a stablecoin deposit usually costs far less than a card payment.
4. Buy RUNE. Use the RUNE/USDT or RUNE/USD market, and check the cheapest venue in the table above first.
5. Decide where to keep it. On the exchange is simplest, but the exchange then holds your coins. RUNE runs on THORChain itself; withdraw only to a THORChain address.

Where to buy THORChain at the best price

The cheapest venue right now is marked in the table above. Add its trading fee before comparing: on RUNE the venues disagree by about 0.27 percent on average, so on a small purchase the fee and the funding method usually matter more.

• The price on that venue. Each row shows the gap to our composite.
• The trading fee. Our fee comparison lists spot fees side by side.
• How you fund the account. A bank transfer or stablecoin deposit is usually far cheaper than a card payment, which often costs several percent.

Why the THORChain price differs between exchanges

In our minute-by-minute measurement the gap between the highest and lowest venue averaged about 0.27 percent, against about 0.025 percent for Bitcoin. It went above half a percent in about 92 minutes out of every thousand, and reached about 2.2 percent at its widest.

About four fifths of the RUNE spot volume we track trades on a single venue. The spread figure at the top of this page is the live measurement; our guide on why crypto prices differ between exchanges explains the mechanism.

What moves the THORChain price

The wider crypto market, and in RUNE’s case its own news too. In our hourly composite, RUNE moved with Bitcoin at a correlation of about 0.57, where 1 would mean identical moves, and its moves were about two and a half times the size of Bitcoin’s.

RUNE-specific drivers come on top: cross-chain swap volume, the protocol’s own risk events and leverage. The funding rates on this page show whether leveraged traders are paying to be long or short right now.

Pros and cons of THORChain

Pros

• Swaps native assets across chains without wrapping.
• RUNE is needed in every pool and by every node.

Cons

• THORChain shut down its lending and savings products after they built up obligations it could not cover in full.
• About four fifths of the RUNE spot volume we track trades on a single exchange.
• One of the widest price gaps between exchanges we track, about 11 times Bitcoin’s.

THORChain’s highest price

THORChain’s all-time high is about $20.9 on volume-weighted data. The chart above shows the last 30 days of our composite, and the RUNE to USD converter applies the live price to any amount.