How Chinese Memecoin reshaped the crypto market landscape: from cultural clashes to cross-industry breakthroughs

The term “Binance Life” has become popular and eventually made it onto a certain leading exchange’s perpetual contracts.

Anyone involved in the crypto space over the past two weeks has probably heard of it. What started as a joke has turned into a real project, and even the founders behind it didn’t expect things to develop this way. It first gained attention through discussions by the CEO of a major exchange, then sparked a wave of Chinese tickers across different blockchains, followed by recent disputes over transaction fees, and finally a temporary pause through cross-chain collaborations.

It seems like a typical project story, but in reality, it reflects a deeper cultural shift—this is the first time that a large number of high-market-cap Memecoins are using Chinese instead of English. What does this Meme culture represent, and what does it reveal?

We spoke with community operator Barry, a trader from Europe managing a community of hundreds. When foreigners start engaging with Chinese Memes, what are they thinking?

Behind the Market Movements

This wave of market activity is both mysterious and exciting for ordinary traders.

Barry recalls, “The first time I saw a Chinese-marked coin break the $20 million market cap, I was shocked. On one hand, I saw the potential of Memecoins, but when it surged to $60 million or even over $100 million, the European groups were already buzzing. Many people rushed to top up on-chain, and the reason was simply that the price was rising. But why was it rising? They had no idea.”

This is not an isolated phenomenon. According to on-chain data, on October 8th, the transaction volume on a certain public chain suddenly soared to $6.05 billion, reaching the heights of the 2021 altcoin boom. The difference this time is that the main characters are Chinese Memecoins.

That day, over 100,000 new traders flooded into the frenzy, nearly 70% of whom made profits. This attracted a large number of foreign participants to on-chain activities, with active addresses increasing by nearly one million compared to the previous period.

Western investors tend to jump in only when prices are soaring, often only realizing the trend after the fact by “searching Chinese.” Cultural differences and trading habits have caused many European and American players to suffer losses.

“European Memecoin investors used to follow American internet culture, emphasizing self-deprecation and rebellion. The sudden emergence of Chinese Memecoins left many Westerners confused,” Barry said.

However, because Barry had collaborated with Chinese teams early on, he understood the community’s operational logic—relationships, emotional resonance, and so on. He began spreading Chinese narratives within European communities, explaining the differences to Western traders.

Clash of Two Meme Cultures

From the perspective of community participation in Memecoins, the differences are obvious. European traders prefer conspiracy-themed Meme projects, mainly active within the Ethereum ecosystem, often controlled and pumped by well-known influencers or teams. These communities grow slowly, but as long as influencers or teams hold large bottom-positioned chips, the risk is high—selling pressure can appear at any time. This is why long-term projects are hard to establish in Europe.

In contrast, Chinese communities find it much easier to build projects. They focus more on emotion and storytelling, with project teams and Meme communities “telling stories” in WeChat groups to gather sentiment. Under “relatively fair” conditions, they use emotional-driven promotion to sustain longer-term community enthusiasm.

This round is especially friendly to Chinese players—simply buying IPs or concept tokens of opinion leaders they like can “print money at will.” Some retail investors rotated through 65 Chinese Memecoins on BNB Chain within a week, starting with $100–$300, spreading their bets, then adding positions in trending coins, netting $87,000 in a week.

This high-frequency “casting-net” approach reflects the style of Chinese retail investors’ rapid speculation in new sectors. Meanwhile, Western players are beginning to abandon small-cap Memecoins (around $500,000 market cap) and shift toward projects with more certainty starting from $5 million.

This also promotes the activity of cross-cultural agencies like Barry’s—helping Asian projects gain Western trust and assisting European teams to enter Asian markets. He believes that this cultural difference driven by personal experience is fostering new cross-community cooperation opportunities.

From Satirical Meme to Ideological Meme

From a broader perspective, the evolution of Memecoins is rooted in the collision of different cultural genes.

Western Memecoins trace back to Dogecoin in 2013, a joke by two programmers. It was originally a humorous mockery of Bitcoin’s seriousness, but due to celebrity effects and lasting community enthusiasm, its market cap once exceeded $88.8 billion in May 2021.

Pepe coin followed a similar path, originating from cultural memes in the 4chan community, exploding upon release, with a market cap surpassing $1 billion. The Pepe project had no pre-sale, no team allocation, no roadmap—officially stating the coin was “worthless, just entertainment.”

This value system dominated many Solana Memecoins later—nihilistic Fartcoin, Uselesscoin, or Neet coin, which reflects Western internet culture’s love for “disrupting real-world value” and black humor. These projects used image memes and rebellious spirit to capture investors’ imagination, long dominating the attention economy. Chinese regions lack understanding of the “cultural value” of such coins, leading to misconceptions.

Chinese Memecoins, however, show different characteristics—they are rooted in resonance and identity projection. Coins like “Humble Little One” use self-deprecating humor of the working class, mocking social realities. The “Cultivation” series reflects fantasies of escaping reality, while “Binance Life” directly carries the dream of overnight wealth in crypto markets. Their common feature is a connection to official entities.

This is a difference in mindset. For Chinese people, it’s called “broadening the road,” but for most Western players, such names imply their profit ceiling is controlled by whether the “system” is willing to pump.

But the explosion of Chinese Memecoins like “Binance Life” directly benefits from emotional resonance. Its slogan compares Binance Life to the previously popular “Apple Life,” with this innovative narrative clearly different from Dogecoin’s satire—more about loyalty and sentiment.

When enough people understand this type of impression, the ticker becomes tied to the system. When it is mocked, the official “has to pump”—this is the reason many can still hold after a washout.

This wave of Meme hype is not entirely retail-driven. A major exchange ecosystem is also carefully cultivating it. From a CEO’s joke, a founder’s reply, to official interactions and the launch of Memecoin platforms, step-by-step, phased releases of favorable news control the narrative around high-market-cap Memecoins, manage breakout rhythms, mid-term liquidity, and long-term sustainability, integrating the previously chaotic Memecoin issuance into the official system, making the frenzy more organized and continuously attracting market attention.

Spreading the hype from a single project to the entire ecosystem further reinforces the mindset of “the next project could make me a millionaire.” This “ladder-like” upward expectation is also why, when multiple hot projects appear simultaneously, we don’t feel a significant liquidity siphon.

Under the joint efforts of the official and community, this has become a clear “wealth creation movement.” This path confirms the structured listing expectations behind Chinese Memecoins—something that was hard to imagine a few months ago.

In contrast, Western Memecoins are more luck-based community celebrations or driven by certain groups. This time, under multi-party cooperation, the celebration has turned into an obvious “wealth creation movement.”

Platform PR Battles and Breaking the Ice

This controversy also triggered intense PR battles among trading platforms.

On October 11th, a community leader tweeted calling for a boycott of centralized platforms charging 2%-9% listing fees. Three days later, a founder of a compliant platform’s project revealed on X that during negotiations with a trading platform, they found that to list on a major platform, the project needed to stake 2 million BNB, pay an 8% airdrop and marketing allocation of tokens, and deposit $250,000 as a guarantee.

He compared the two platforms, believing the compliant platform values project quality more, while the major platform resembles “listing fees.” Upon this, the major platform quickly published an article denying the claims, stating “completely false and defamatory,” emphasizing “we never charge listing fees,” and threatening legal action against leaked internal conversations.

Later, they issued a more restrained statement, admitting their initial response was overreactive but reaffirming no fees are charged.

As public opinion fermented, the compliant platform responded swiftly. Its blockchain head stated on social media: “Projects should be able to list on exchanges with zero fees.”

The narrative began to shift. The compliant platform, seemingly “pouting,” officially announced support for BNB, marking the first time supporting tokens issued on a direct competitor’s mainnet. The founder of the major platform expressed welcome on social media and encouraged listing more ecosystem projects.

The original whistleblower founder also began to show goodwill, and the head of the compliant platform made a dramatic 180-degree turn. They released a demo video, even using “Binance Life” as an example token, joking in Chinese about “activating Binance Life mode on Base,” and in replies saying “Binance Life + another mode = the strongest combo.” The industry interprets this series of actions as a thawing of the East-West divide in the crypto market.

When trading volume and attention from the Asian market reach a certain scale, Western trading ecosystems have no choice but to actively approach Chinese communities. Platform competition and cultural narratives become intertwined.

Opportunities Behind Language

Mainstream Western media paid close attention to this event. Many Western retail traders lamented in groups, “The price went up and we don’t understand it,” with most rushing to buy after the price surged. Even communities like Barry’s, with deep engagement with Chinese culture, often encounter the problem of “knowing the meaning but not the significance” when predicting culturally meaningful Memecoins. This shows that for overseas investors, Chinese elements once became a new barrier to entry.

This wave emphasizes the concept that “language is an opportunity.” For the crypto world, the cultural emotions behind different languages are valuable resources. This is the “first time Western investors need to understand Chinese culture to participate in this feast.”

Barry believes, “The Chinese Meme rally is nearing its end. The longer the trend lasts, the more PTSD traders will develop. These Memecoins are already shifting toward smaller market caps and faster-paced rotations.”

He also states, “English and Chinese are now the two main parts of the Meme market, and this pattern won’t change quickly. China has a larger market and is more easily driven by sentiment. Europe tends to lag behind. I think English tickers might return, but they will become more integrated with Asian culture, inspired by this Chinese Meme wave, adopting more Chinese humor, symbolism, and aesthetics.”

To catch the next wave of Memecoin opportunities, relying solely on luck is not enough; a deep understanding of the language and culture of different regions is essential. AI might help with cross-language dissemination—automatically generating memes, translating social posts—but AI struggles to replace deep cultural contextual understanding.

We may see a more polarized crypto world. Increasingly, projects with Chinese tickers are emerging in various ecosystems. While there is a trend of mutual integration and learning between Western and Eastern communities, there may also be segmented ecosystems operating independently. Amid these cultural differences, there may lie the next wave of opportunities.