Foreigners struggle with Chinese Meme coins? An observation from a Polish trader.

In the past two weeks, if you are in the crypto world, you cannot have missed that amazing Chinese ticker.

A Polish trader friend of mine told me that he was stunned when he first saw a certain coin marked in Chinese surge to a market value of 20 million USD. What about when it skyrocketed to 60 million, or even broke 100 million? The European group was completely blown up. A bunch of people frantically deposited into the BSC chain, completely clueless about what was happening, only knowing - it was rising.

This guy is called Barry, and he created a community called WOK Labs with a few hundred foreigners. He is one of the few foreigners who can understand Chinese meme plays.

Foreigners playing with Chinese memes, not adapting well

On October 8th, the trading volume on the BSC chain skyrocketed to $6.05 billion. What does that mean? It has returned to the peak levels of the mechanism coin altcoins in 2021. However, this time, the leaders are all Chinese memes.

Defillama data shows that more than 100,000 new wallets flooded in to play with these coins that day, with nearly 70% of people making money. This wave of activity directly caused the number of active addresses on BSC to surge by nearly 1 million compared to last month.

But what about European and American players? Most of them enter the market at a high price.

Barry said it very frankly: “In the past, Europeans followed American internet culture when it came to memes, with self-deprecation and rebellion. Suddenly, a bunch of Chinese coins popped up, and everyone was dumbfounded.”

The differences in gameplay are too obvious. European traders prefer to play conspiracy games, looking for projects backed by major KOLs, with teams controlling a large amount of chips and then pumping the price. These games are built slowly, but the selling pressure risk is huge, making it hard to maintain in the long run.

What about the Chinese community? They place more emphasis on emotions and stories. Project teams “tell stories” in WeChat groups, relying on emotions to drive engagement, which theoretically can establish a more lasting community.

A retail investor has rotated through 65 types of Chinese meme coins on the BNB chain within 7 days, initially throwing 100-300 dollars for each as a wide net, and adding positions when there are signs of potential. After a week, he netted 87,000 dollars. This high-frequency “net-casting” strategy is a typical style of retail investors in the Chinese community.

Players in Europe and America have become smarter and are now starting to abandon those small caps under 500,000 USD, directly targeting assets starting from 5 million USD.

Agencies like Barry that connect Eastern and Western markets are becoming increasingly popular. They help Asian projects enter the Western market and also assist European teams in entering Asia.

From Doge to Chinese memes, the cultural genes are completely different

Looking back, the ancestor of Western meme coins is Doge from 2013.

Doge was originally just a joke, mocking how serious Bitcoin was. As a result, with endorsements from celebrities like Elon Musk, its market value surged to $88.8 billion in May 2021.

Pepe follows a similar path. Launched in early 2023, it briefly surpassed a market cap of 1 billion USD, thanks to the cultural genes of the 4chan community. The team directly stated: “There is no intrinsic value, purely entertainment.”

This nihilistic value system dominated a large number of memes on Solana later on. Names like Fartcoin and Uselesscoin represent the subversion and dark humor of Western internet culture towards “real value”.

Chinese memes are completely a different avenue.

“Mediocre Xiao He”, “Customer Service Xiao He” are self-deprecating terms for the working class. The “Cultivation” series reflects fantasies of escaping reality. And that most popular ticker directly embodies the dream of getting rich overnight in the crypto market.

This is the difference in thinking systems. Chinese people feel that this is called “widening the road”, while players from Europe and America believe it means that the upper limit is controlled by the “system”—the system needs to be willing to pull for there to be a show.

But it must be said that this round of Chinese meme explosion has indeed benefited from emotional resonance. That slogan compares the life of a certain exchange to the previously popular “Apple life”; this innovative narrative is completely different from the satire of Doge, focusing more on loyalty and sentiment.

Moreover, this is not purely spontaneous from retail investors. From a joke made by He Yi to CZ's reply, followed by a series of official interactions, and the launch of the MemeRush platform—officially releasing benefits in a step-by-step and phased manner.

This originally chaotic meme issuance has been incorporated into the official system, making the festivities more organized and keeping market attention focused on the BSC chain for a longer period.

This “stepwise” expectation is why there is no obvious liquidity siphoning effect when multiple popular projects emerge simultaneously at the beginning.

With the joint efforts of the official and the community, a significant ladder-like wealth effect has been created. This level of consensus was unimaginable just a few months ago.

The exchange had a fallout, then reconciled again.

This turmoil has also sparked a PR war between exchanges.

On October 11th, Jesse tweeted that he would boycott CEXs that charge a listing fee of 2%-9%.

Three days later, CJ, the founder of Limitless Labs, revealed on X: To launch on a major exchange, you need to stake 2 million BNB, plus give 8% of the total tokens for airdrops and marketing distribution, along with a $250,000 margin.

He compared two exchanges, saying that a certain large exchange is like “listing fees”.

A major exchange quickly issued a statement denying the allegations, saying “completely untrue and defamatory,” and emphasized that “we never charge listing fees,” even threatening to sue. Later, they issued a more restrained statement, acknowledging that their initial response was overly aggressive.

Jesse, the person in charge of the Base chain, also publicly stated: “There should be no cost for launching a project.”

But the turning point has come.

A competing exchange suddenly announced that it will include BNB in its future supported token list. This is the first time in history that a token from a direct competitor's mainnet is being supported.

CZ expressed his welcome on social media and encouraged the other party to list more BSC chain projects.

The exposed CJ has also started to show goodwill. Jesse's attitude has made a 180-degree turnaround — he posted a Base App demonstration video, using “some Chinese ticker” as a sample token, and even joked in Chinese about “opening XX mode on Base.”

This is interpreted by the industry as a breakthrough in the China-U.S. crypto world camp. It also brings out the long-lost golden dog for the Base chain.

It can be said that when the trading volume and attention in the Asian market reach a certain scale, Western exchanges have to actively approach the Chinese community.

Language is opportunity, culture is barrier

Mainstream media in Europe and the United States is paying close attention to this matter. Many Western retail investors are expressing in the group, “We can't understand the rise in coin prices.”

Even in communities like Barry, which have deep interactions with the Chinese system, it is often the case that when predicting a meme with internal cultural significance, they “know its meaning but not its implications.”

For overseas investors, Chinese elements have become a new barrier to entry.

In the Western community, there are even people developing translation tools for Chinese to English. Recently, there was a series of videos where a foreigner learned Chinese and bought memes that became especially popular.

This wave emphasizes “language is opportunity”—the cultural emotional information behind different languages is itself a layer of valuable resources. This is the first time that Western investors need to understand Chinese culture in order to participate in this feast.

Barry thinks: “The recent trend of Chinese memes is nearing its end. The longer it lasts, the more severe the PTSD for traders. Now these coins have begun to rotate and 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 is not going to change quickly. The Chinese market is larger and more easily driven by emotions. The European market tends to lag behind. I think English tickers may return, but they will become more integrated with Asian culture - infused with Chinese humor, symbolism, and aesthetics.”

In the future, to capture the next wave of meme opportunities, relying solely on luck will not be enough; we need to deeply interpret the languages and cultures of different regional communities.

AI might help with cross-language communication, automatically generating memes, translating social media updates, and so on. But AI ultimately struggles to replace a deep understanding of cultural contexts.

We may see a more polarized crypto world. More and more Chinese tickers like “Golden Dog” will appear on chains such as Base and Solana. There is a new trend of integration and mutual learning between the Western and Eastern communities, but there may also emerge a partitioned ecology with each side governing itself.

And perhaps hidden within these cultural differences are new opportunities.