When foreigners start playing with Chinese Meme coins: A cross-cultural encryption experiment

In the past two weeks, the entire Chinese-speaking encryption community has been buzzing about a word.

If you're in the crypto space, you must have heard about this matter — from CZ's casual reply at the beginning, to Star following up with discussions, then to the Chinese ticker craze of Tron and Solana, and until a few days ago when a certain project party publicly revealed the so-called “listing terms” that sparked controversy, ultimately Jesse's words brought everything to a halt.

What exactly happened behind this? I spoke with a Polish trader named Barry, who runs a European community of several hundred people. When these foreigners started engaging with Chinese memes, what were they thinking?

The Confused Moments of European Brothers

Barry was stunned when he first noticed a certain Chinese ticker surge to a market value of 20 million dollars.

“Our group blew up,” he recalled, “when it shot up to 60 million and 100 million, a bunch of people frantically deposited into the BSC chain, but they had no idea why it was rising.”

On-chain data does not lie. On October 8th, the trading volume of BSC skyrocketed to $6.05 billion - a figure not seen since the last wave of mechanism token altcoin seasons in 2021. However, this time, it was all led by Chinese Memes.

On that day, over 100,000 new players joined, and 70% of them made money. The number of active addresses increased by nearly 1 million compared to the same period last month. A large number of “foreigners” truly participated in the BSC ecosystem for the first time.

For Western players, this is really the first time they've been hit hard.

In the past, Europeans followed American internet culture by engaging with memes—self-deprecation, rebellion, and dark humor. Suddenly, a wave of Chinese memes emerged and took center stage, causing many people to lose their direction. Once the prices skyrocketed, they hurried to check the meanings in Chinese, only to find they had already missed the best entry point.

Barry understood the dynamics of the Chinese community early on by collaborating with a Chinese team on WOK Labs — the networks of personal relationships, emotional resonance, and story-driven approaches. He began to educate the groups in Europe about these differences.

Two Completely Different Ways to Play

Upon careful observation, one will find that the strategies for playing memes in the East and West are fundamentally different.

In Europe, they prefer “conspiracy schemes” — relying on major KOLs or teams to control the market and drive up prices, mostly based on the Ethereum ecosystem. This kind of community is established slowly, but with major players holding the bottom chips, it also means they can dump at any time. Therefore, it is difficult to create long-term projects in Europe.

The Chinese community is much easier to establish. People pay more attention to emotions and stories, gathering consensus by “telling stories” in WeChat groups and driving prices with emotions. In theory, this kind of “relatively fair” emotional drive can allow the community to live longer.

Especially during this cycle, Chinese players are simply thriving. As long as you buy the IP you think is popular (or a statement from a certain opinion leader), you can easily profit. There is a retail investor who specifically buys Chinese coins, changing 65 types of Memes on BSC within 7 days, investing 100-300 dollars each time to cast a wide net, seeing which one gains momentum and then increasing the investment, netting 87,000 dollars in a week.

This high-frequency “net-casting” approach is, to some extent, a typical style of Chinese retail investors rapidly speculating in new tracks. Meanwhile, players in Europe and the United States are also adjusting their strategies, no longer touching small market caps below $500,000, and instead looking for “certainty” targets starting from $5 million.

Bridgers like Barry are becoming increasingly active, helping Asian projects gain trust in the West and also assisting European teams in entering the Asian market.

From Dogecoin to Chinese Memes: The Shift of Cultural Genes

Looking back, the ancestor of Western Meme coins is Doge, born in 2013—a joke created by two programmers to mock Bitcoin. As a result, due to the influence of celebrities like Musk, its market value soared to 88.8 billion dollars in May 2021.

Pepe coin is similar. A cultural meme hatched by the 4chan community, it quickly became popular after its launch in early 2023, with a market value exceeding 1 billion. The project party stated, “It has no intrinsic value and is for entertainment purposes only.”

This value system dominated a large number of Solana memes later on—tokens like Fartcoin and Uselesscoin that embody nihilism, or Neet, which reflects the dark humor of the Western internet. Memes on Solana capture imagination with image memes and a rebellious spirit, occupying the central position in the attention economy for a long time.

Chinese memes are completely different.

They are rooted in resonance and identity projection. The “Humble Worker” series self-mocks social realities, the “Cultivation” series reflects the fantasy of escaping reality, and this time's popular ticker directly carries the dream of becoming rich overnight. The common feature is that they all have something to do with the “official”.

This is the cultural difference in thinking systems. Chinese people refer to it as 'widening the path', while Western players feel that this means the upper limit is controlled by the 'system'.

However, it is undeniable that the recent explosion of Chinese Memes, represented by this instance, directly benefits from emotional resonance. This innovative narrative is clearly different from the satire of Dogecoin, appealing more to loyalty and sentiment.

When enough people understand this ticker, it becomes bound in the system. When it is taken out to be mocked, the official “has to pump it” - this may be the psychology of many people who can still hold on after a wash.

From a Joke to the MemeRush Platform

This wave of enthusiasm is not entirely spontaneous.

From a joke by He Yi, CZ's response, to a series of official interactions, and then to a certain exchange launching the MemeRush platform—step by step, phase by phase releasing positive news, maintaining the high market value of meme out-circulation, liquidity, and sustainability over time.

Incorporate the originally disordered Meme issuance into the official system, making the carnival more organized, while keeping the market's attention focused on the BSC chain for a long time.

This “upward staircase” expectation is why multiple popular projects emerged simultaneously in the early stages of the market without a significant liquidity siphoning effect.

Under the joint action of the official and the community, a significant ladder-like wealth effect has formed. This structured expectation of listing and the level of market consensus were unimaginable just a few months ago.

In contrast, Western memes are more about luck-based community revelry or driven by conspiracy groups. This time, under the multiple roles of the founder, platform, and community, the BSC ecosystem has transformed the revelry into a blatant “wealth creation movement.”

The Public Opinion War Between Exchanges

The turmoil has also sparked fierce competition among trading platforms.

On October 11, a head of a certain Base tweeted calling for a boycott of centralized exchanges that charge a listing fee of 2%-9%.

Three days later, the founder of a certain prediction market project revealed on X that it requires a pledge of 2 million BNB to go live on a certain leading exchange, along with an 8% airdrop and marketing allocation of the total tokens, plus a $250,000 margin. He compared two platforms and believed that a certain compliant platform valued project worth more, while a certain leading exchange was like “charging for listing.”

The exchange quickly published a statement denying the allegations, stating that they are “completely untrue and defamatory,” emphasizing that they “never charge listing fees,” and threatened to take legal action. They later issued a more restrained statement, acknowledging that their initial response was overly emotional but reiterated that they do not charge listing fees.

Just as the debate was brewing, a representative from a compliance platform publicly stated: “There should be zero costs for a project to go live.”

Then public opinion began to reverse. The platform officially announced that it would include BNB in its future support list—marking the first time in history that a direct competitor's mainnet token is supported. The founder of a leading exchange welcomed this on social media and encouraged the other party to list more BSC projects.

Originally, the founder of the “exposure” clause also began to take the initiative to show goodwill. The person's attitude changed 180 degrees, using that popular ticker as an example when releasing the demonstration video, and even jokingly said in Chinese “to activate this mode”.

This series of actions is interpreted as a breakthrough in the encryption camps of China and the United States, and it also brought a long-lost little golden dog to a certain chain.

It can be said that when the trading volume and attention brought by the Asian market reach a certain scale, Western platforms have to actively approach the Chinese community. Platform competition is also intertwined with cultural narratives.

Language is Opportunity

Mainstream media in Europe and America is paying close attention to this event. Many Western retail investors are lamenting in the group, “We don't understand why the coin price has risen,” and most people rushed to buy tickets only after the price took off.

Even for communities like Barry that have deep interactions with the Chinese system, they often encounter the problem of “understanding the meaning but not the significance” when anticipating a Meme with internal cultural connotations. For overseas investors, Chinese elements have at times become a new barrier to entry.

Some members of the European and American community even developed a tool for translating Chinese to English. The recent popular video series of foreigners learning Chinese and buying Memes reflects this dilemma to some extent.

This wave emphasizes the concept of “language as opportunity.” For the cryptocurrency world, the cultural emotional information behind different languages itself is a layer of valuable resources. This is the “first time that European and American investors need to understand Chinese culture in order to participate in the feast.”

Barry believes: “The current wave of Chinese Memes is nearing its end. The longer it lasts, the more severe the PTSD for traders. We can see that these coins have started to evolve towards smaller market caps and faster sectors.”

But he also said: “English and Chinese have already become the main components of the Meme market, and this situation will not change quickly. The Chinese market is larger and more easily driven by emotions. The European market tends to lag behind, and I think English tickers may make a comeback, but they will become more integrated with Asian culture. Inspired by this round of Chinese Meme, they will become more Chinese in nature—humor, symbolism, and aesthetics are all part of it.”

The Multi-Polar Encryption World

To capture the next wave of Meme opportunities in the future, relying solely on luck is not enough; it also requires a deep understanding of the languages and cultures of different regional communities.

AI can currently help with cross-linguistic communication, such as automatically generating memes and translating social dynamics to accelerate information dissemination. However, AI struggles to replace a deep understanding of cultural context.

We may see a more multipolar encryption world. On-chain assets like Base and Solana are increasingly appearing with Chinese tickers like “Golden Dog”; there is a new trend of integration and mutual learning between Western and Eastern communities, but there may also be the emergence of separate ecological zones.

Amid these cultural differences, perhaps new opportunities are hidden.