When foreigners start learning Chinese to trade Meme coins: a cross-cultural encryption experiment

When foreigners start learning Chinese Cryptocurrency Trading

If you haven't heard of “that term” in the past two weeks, you really can't be considered someone who is involved in Cryptocurrency Trading.

It's just a ticker, how could it cause such a big stir? Even CZ himself didn't expect that a casual reply could stir up such huge waves.

First, the CEO of a certain exchange jumped out to discuss, then TRON and Solana also started to adjust their Chinese Tickers. A few days ago, a certain project party publicly announced the so-called “listing terms,” and the two chains along with the trading platform went directly at it. Finally, a person in charge of a certain chain said, “Starting that model with us,” which brought the farce to an end.

But what this represents is definitely not as simple as just a token name.

The Confusion of Polish Traders

I know a Polish guy named Barry, who operates a European trading community with hundreds of members.

He told me that he was stunned the first time he saw a coin with a Chinese label surge to a market value of 20 million USD. By the time it rose to 60 million, or even broke 100 million, the European group was already in a frenzy — a bunch of people were rushing to pump money into the BSC chain, just because they saw the price skyrocketing, without having any idea why it was rising.

This is not an isolated case. Looking at the on-chain data, on October 8th, the trading volume of BSC soared to 6.05 billion USD. The last time we saw such a boom was during the mechanism coin market in 2021. The difference this time is that it’s driven by Chinese memes.

On the same day, over 100,000 new wallets surged in, with nearly 70% of people making a profit. The number of active addresses increased by nearly 1 million compared to the same period last month.

Western investors have suffered a silent loss this time.

In the past, Western countries would follow their own internet culture when it came to memes, relying on self-deprecating humor and rebellious spirit. Suddenly emerging Chinese memes have left many foreigners completely confused — they only look up the meaning in Chinese after they’ve seen them.

Collision of Two Play Styles

In Europe, cryptocurrency trading tends to favor the “conspiracy coin” model—where major KOLs or teams control the market and drive up prices, primarily within the Ethereum ecosystem. This type of community takes time to establish, but once a well-known figure or team holds the bottom chips, the price can rise sharply. Of course, the risks are significant as selling pressure could drop at any moment.

The Chinese community operates entirely on a different logic.

Pay more attention to emotional resonance and storytelling. Project teams in WeChat groups “tell stories” to attract attention and use emotions to drive market trends. Theoretically, communities established under this “fair” model can survive longer.

Especially in this cycle, Chinese players are simply in their element - buy the IPs you think will be popular ( or the things mentioned by opinion leaders ), and you have a chance to print money.

I know a retail investor who changed 65 types of Chinese Meme coins on the BSC chain within 7 days. The operation is very simple: first invest 100 to 300 dollars to spread the net, and increase the position for whichever starts to rise. After a week, he netted a profit of 87,000 dollars.

This high-frequency “net-casting” approach is essentially a typical style of rapid speculation by retail investors in the Chinese community towards new tracks.

At the same time, players in Europe and America are also adjusting their strategies – they are now starting to abandon small-cap coins worth around $500,000, and are turning to targets starting at $5 million, in pursuit of certainty.

Agencies like Barry that connect Eastern and Western markets are becoming increasingly active. They help Asian projects gain the trust of the West, and also assist European teams in entering Asia.

Behind cultural differences, there may be new opportunities for cooperation.

From Doge to Chinese Meme

Looking back, Memecoin is originally a product of cultural collision.

In 2013, Doge was jokingly created by two programmers to mock the serious nature of Bitcoin. As a result of celebrity influence like a certain billionaire who enjoys tweeting and the enthusiasm of the community, its market value soared to $88.8 billion in May 2021.

Pepe coin is similar - a cultural meme incubated by the 4chan community, which skyrocketed in popularity after launching in early 2023, with a market value exceeding 1 billion USD. There was no presale, no team allocation, and no roadmap; the team directly stated that this thing “has no intrinsic value, it's purely entertainment.”

This worldview dominated a large number of Meme coins on Solana later on. What nihilism, dark humor, and the subversion of traditional values – the Memes on Sol captured attention with image memes and a rebellious spirit, ruling the Meme market for a long time.

It is precisely for this reason that players in Chinese-speaking regions have always had a bias in their “cultural value judgment” of these tokens.

Chinese Meme coins exhibit completely different characteristics.

They are rooted in resonance and identity projection. For example, the “Working Class” series self-mockingly portrays the current state of life at the bottom, the “Cultivation” series reflects the fantasy of escaping reality, while a certain “Life” series directly embodies the dream of getting rich overnight.

This is the difference in thinking systems.

Chinese people refer to this as “broadening the path”, while European and American players believe that such names imply that the upper limit is controlled by the “system”—whether or not to pump depends entirely on the official's intentions.

But it is precisely this emotional resonance that allows Chinese Meme coins to explode rapidly. A certain “life” series slogan directly parallels the previously popular “certain brand life”, and this innovative narrative is completely different from the satirical route of Dogecoin, appealing more to loyalty and sentiment.

When this kind of impression is accepted by enough people, this Ticker becomes bound to the system. Once the official is mocked, it “has to pump” - this may be the thought of many who can still hold on after a wash.

This wave of Meme enthusiasm is not entirely spontaneous among retail investors.

From He Yi's joke, to CZ's reply, followed by a series of official interactions, and then to a certain exchange launching a Meme platform, positive news is released step by step and phase by phase. The originally chaotic Meme issuance is integrated into the official system, making the celebration more organized and keeping the market's attention focused on the BSC chain for a long time.

The enthusiasm has spread from a single project to the entire ecosystem, driving the public's “next trade might make them a millionaire” Degen mentality. This “step-by-step” expectation is why, when the market first started, the appearance of multiple popular projects did not feel a significant liquidity siphoning effect.

Public Relations Battle of Exchanges

This storm has also triggered intense battles between exchanges.

On October 11th, a certain blockchain leader tweeted to resist centralized exchanges that charge a listing fee of 2% to 9%.

Three days later, the founder of a certain prediction market project revealed that in order to launch on a leading exchange, the project team needs to stake 2 million BNB and also pay high fees — an 8% airdrop and marketing allocation of the total tokens, plus a $250,000 deposit.

He compared two exchanges and believed that a certain compliant platform values project value more, while a certain leading exchange seems to charge like “listing fees.”

The exchange quickly issued a statement denying the allegations, claiming that they are “completely untrue and defamatory,” emphasizing that they “never charge listing fees,” and threatened to take legal action. They then released a more measured statement, admitting that their initial response was excessive.

A certain compliant platform also responded quickly. The head of its chain publicly stated: “There should be 0 fees for projects to go live on exchanges.”

But public opinion has begun to turn - the platform officially announced that it will include BNB in the list of tokens supported in the future, marking the first time in history that it supports tokens issued on the mainnet of a direct competitor.

The founder of a certain exchange welcomed this move on social media and encouraged the other party to list more BSC chain projects.

The project party that was exposed has begun to take the initiative to be friendly, and the attitude of a certain chain leader has also turned 180 degrees - he released a demonstration video and even jokingly said in Chinese, “Starting a certain person's mode here,” and replied under a certain founder's Twitter, “Certain person's life + certain chain's life = the strongest combination.”

This series of actions is interpreted as the thawing of the China-US cryptocurrency camp. It also brings back the long-lost golden dog for the chain.

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

Language is Opportunity

Mainstream media in Europe and America has given high attention to this matter.

Many Western retail investors sigh in the group, “We don't understand the rising coin prices,” and most people rush to buy in only after the prices have soared. Even in communities like Barry's, which have deep exchanges with the Chinese system, when it comes to foreseeing a Meme with internal cultural significance, they often “know the meaning but not the implication.”

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

Some foreigners have even developed doge tools for Chinese to English translation, and there are people who specifically record video tutorials “Learn Chinese to buy Meme coins.”

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

Barry believes: “I think the current trend of Chinese Memes is nearing its end. The longer this cycle lasts, the more severe the PTSD it brings to traders. We can see that these Meme coins have begun 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. China has a larger market and is 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—due to the inspiration brought by this round of Chinese Memes, they will have more Chinese-style humor, symbolism, and aesthetics.”

To capture the next wave of Meme opportunities in the future, relying solely on luck is not enough. It is also necessary to deeply understand the language and culture of different regional communities.

AI may help in cross-linguistic communication—automatically generating Chinese meme images and translating social dynamics to accelerate information dissemination. However, AI ultimately struggles to replace a deep understanding of cultural context.

We may see a more multipolar cryptocurrency world. More and more on-chain “Golden Dog” Chinese Tickers will appear, and there is a new trend of integration and mutual learning between Western and Eastern communities, but there may also be a fragmented ecosystem where each governs itself.

Amid these cultural differences, perhaps new opportunities lie hidden.