Foreigners messing up with Chinese Meme Coins? A Polish trader's perspective on the collision of Eastern and Western crypto cultures

When Polish Traders Encounter Chinese Conspiracy Coins

“I was stunned when I saw that Chinese-marked coin surge to a $20 million market cap,” recalls Polish trader Barry. “When it skyrocketed to $60 million and broke a hundred million, our European group was already buzzing—people were pouring money into BSC chain without even knowing what was happening, just watching the price go up.”

Barry is a co-founder of WOK Labs, managing a multinational community of hundreds. He might be one of the few Western players who could understand this wave of Chinese Meme coins early on.

On-chain data doesn’t lie. On October 8th, BSC’s trading volume surged to $6.05 billion—this number recalls the frenzy of mechanism coins in 2021. The difference is, this time, the leaders are all Chinese Meme coins. Over 100,000 new players flooded in that day, with nearly 70% making profits. Active addresses increased by nearly 1 million compared to the same period last month.

The question is: When did Western investors start entering? The answer is after the price took off.

Many European and American players only looked up the Chinese meanings afterward, realizing “Oh, this is the meme.” Cultural barriers caused them to suffer their first big loss.

“European Meme culture used to follow American internet trends—self-deprecating, rebellious,” Barry explains. “Suddenly, Chinese Memes appeared, leaving many clueless.”

But Barry is different. Having collaborated with Chinese teams early on to create WOK Labs, he understood the Chinese community’s ways—networks of relationships, emotional resonance. So he began educating European groups about Chinese narratives, explaining the logic behind this wave.

Two Completely Different Game Rules

A careful comparison reveals huge differences in how East and West play Meme coins.

European traders prefer engaging in conspiracy-type projects, mostly based on Ethereum ecosystem, driven by well-known KOLs or teams controlling the market. These communities develop slowly, but large holders holding bottom chips also mean significant sell pressure risks. So long-term projects are hard to sustain in Europe.

Chinese communities? Easier to establish. They focus more on emotion and storytelling. Project teams “tell stories” in WeChat groups to gather resonance and drive sentiment. In theory, this emotional-driven approach under fair conditions can foster more sustainable communities.

Especially in this cycle, Chinese players are remarkably relaxed—simply buying trending IPs or influential figures’ posts. One retail trader rotated through 65 Chinese Meme coins on BSC within 7 days, spreading $100–$300 widely, then adding to promising coins, netting about $87,000 in a week.

This high-frequency “casting-net” style perfectly reflects Chinese retail investors’ quick speculative approach to new sectors. Meanwhile, Western players are shifting away from small-cap coins around $500,000 market cap, seeking more certainty in projects starting at $5 million.

Agencies like Barry, bridging Chinese and Western markets, are becoming more active—helping Asian projects gain Western trust and assisting European teams to enter Asia.

He believes this cultural difference, driven by personal experience, is fostering new cross-community cooperation opportunities.

From Dogecoin to Chinese Meme Coins: Ideological Shift

Looking back, the Western Meme coin pioneer was Doge, created in 2013 by two programmers as a joke. It mocked Bitcoin’s serious tone, but thanks to celebrity endorsements—like Elon Musk—and community enthusiasm, it peaked at $88.8 billion in market cap in May 2021.

Later, Pepe coin followed a similar path, born from the 4chan community, exploding in early 2023 with a market cap over $1 billion. The Pepe team explicitly stated, “No intrinsic value, just for entertainment.”

This value system dominated many Solana Meme coins afterward—like Fartcoin, Uselesscoin—nihilistic products, or Neet, reflecting Western internet culture’s love for “subverting real-world value” and dark humor. Solana Meme images and rebellious spirit captured imagination, dominating the attention economy for a long time.

However, because of this, Chinese-dominated regions lacked the cultural valuation of these tokens, leading to distortions.

Chinese Meme coins show entirely different characteristics—they are rooted in resonance and identity projection. Tokens like “Humble Little One” or “Customer Service Xiao He” use self-deprecating humor about workers to satirize social realities; “Cultivation” series reflect fantasies of escaping reality; and “Binance Life,” which carries dreams of overnight wealth. A common feature is their close ties to official entities.

This reflects a difference in mindset. Chinese see this as “broadening the road,” while Western players believe the ceiling is controlled by “the system.”

But the explosion of Chinese Meme coins like “Binance Life” directly benefits from emotional resonance. Its slogan compares Binance Life to the popular “Apple Life,” with this innovative narrative differing from Dogecoin’s satire, appealing more to loyalty and sentimentality.

When enough people understand this impression, the ticker becomes linked to the system. When mocked, the official has to “pump”—perhaps a strategy for many who can hold through wash trading.

This wave isn’t solely driven by retail investors; it’s also a carefully cultivated effort by certain trading platforms. From He Yi’s joking remarks, CZ’s responses, to official interactions and platform launches, step-by-step, phased benefits are released—keeping high-market-cap Meme coins in the spotlight, maintaining liquidity, and extending their lifecycle—integrating originally chaotic issuance into the official system, making the frenzy more organized.

This creates a laddered wealth effect through official and community cooperation. Such structured listing expectations would have been unimaginable just months ago.

In contrast, Western Meme coins are more like luck-based community celebrations or conspiracy-driven pushes. This time, under multiple influences, the frenzy has transformed into a blatant “wealth creation movement.”

Platform Public Relations Battles

The controversy has also sparked fierce PR battles among trading platforms.

On October 11th, a founder of a decentralized protocol called for boycotting centralized exchanges charging listing fees of 2%-9%. Three days later, CJ, founder of a prediction market project, revealed on X that to list on a major platform, projects need to stake large amounts of tokens and pay high fees, including an 8% token airdrop and marketing share, plus a $250,000 deposit.

He compared two platforms. Once his statement was made, the accused platform quickly denied, claiming the allegations were “completely false and libelous,” emphasizing they “never charge listing fees,” and threatened legal action. Later, they issued a more restrained statement, admitting their initial response was over the top.

While the debate heated up, another responded swiftly. Jesse, head of an L2 blockchain, publicly stated: “Getting projects listed should be free.”

But the narrative started to shift—this platform, seemingly out of spite, announced support for tokens launched on a competitor’s mainnet. This was the first time a platform announced support for a direct rival’s tokens. The supported project’s founder welcomed the move on social media, encouraging more projects to list.

CJ, who initially exposed the issue, also began to make overtures. Jesse’s attitude did a 180—first posting a demo video, even using “Binance Life” as an example token, joking in Chinese about “starting Binance Life mode on Base App,” and replying to CZ’s tweet with “Binance Life + Base Life = the strongest combo.”

These actions are seen as a thawing of the US-China crypto rivalry, even bringing a long-lost “golden dog” to the Base chain.

When trading volume and attention from Asia reach a certain scale, Western platforms have no choice but to engage more closely with Chinese communities. Platform competition and cultural narratives are intertwined.

Language as Opportunity

Mainstream Western media have paid close attention. Many Western retail investors lament in groups, “We don’t understand the coin prices,” and most only rushed to buy after prices soared. Even communities like Barry’s, with deep Chinese cultural exchanges, often face the problem of “knowing the meaning but not the significance” of certain Memes.

For overseas investors, Chinese elements initially became a barrier to entry. Western communities even developed translation tools to convert Chinese to English. The recent popularity of foreigners learning Chinese to buy Meme coins also highlights this.

This wave emphasizes the idea that “language is an opportunity.” For crypto, the cultural and emotional information behind different languages is a valuable resource. This is the “first time Western investors need to understand Chinese culture to participate in the feast.”

Barry believes: “I think this Chinese Meme wave is nearing its end. The longer this cycle lasts, the more PTSD traders will suffer. These Memes are already evolving into smaller, faster-moving sectors.”

But he also notes: “English and Chinese are now the main components of the Meme market, and this won’t change soon. China has a larger market and is more easily driven by sentiment. European markets tend to lag. I think English tickers might return, but they will become more integrated with Asian culture—thanks to the inspiration from Chinese Memes, they will adopt more Chinese humor, symbolism, and aesthetics.”

In the future, capturing the next Meme opportunity will require more than luck; it will demand deep understanding of regional language and culture. AI can help with cross-language dissemination—like automatically generating memes or translating social posts—but AI still struggles to replace deep cultural context.

We may see a more multipolar crypto world—chains like Base, Solana increasingly featuring Chinese tickers like “Golden Dog.” There will be new trends of integration and mutual influence between Western and Eastern communities, but also potential for isolated ecosystems. Amid these cultural differences, new opportunities may emerge.