Meme coin roller coaster: When emotions become currency, we are all the guinea pigs of this financial experiment.

During this long holiday, while the traditional market hits the pause button, the encryption world is staging an absurd drama.

Some names sound like joke tokens—Meme4, PALU, and that one called “Life of a Certain Exchange”—whose market cap has multiplied several times within a few days. Early players have easily seen their account balances exceed one million dollars, and the community is filled with screenshots flaunting their gains, with KOLs excited as if they’ve discovered treasure.

What happened next? Starting from October 9, these cryptocurrencies plummeted like kites with cut strings, with a single-day drop of 95% considered normal. Over 100,000 people were liquidated, and $621 million evaporated. The myth of overnight wealth instantly turned into a collective memoir of losers.

This kind of plot is actually not unfamiliar to Wall Street and Lujiazui.

Do you remember GameStop in 2021? Retail investors on Reddit banded together to push the stock price of a nearly bankrupt game store to the sky, causing short-selling institutions to question their very existence. The chairman of the U.S. SEC at the time said it was a “milestone in behavioral finance”—no matter how absurd the price, as long as the trading is real and information is public, it is considered a normal phenomenon in the market.

The American mindset is simple: let the bubbles come, because bubbles are the fuel for market evolution.

What would happen if this Meme coin frenzy occurred on NASDAQ? Wall Street would immediately package a “Meme Stock ETF,” turning social heat into a quantifiable investment factor; The Wall Street Journal would publish a lengthy article discussing the “rise of retail capitalism”; the SEC might study “social media market manipulation,” but in the end, it is highly likely to conclude — this is not fraud, just a collective financial behavior realized through algorithms and social networks driven by group sentiment.

Change the scene, and the story becomes completely different.

If something similar happens in the A-shares, the regulators will issue a risk warning immediately, the media will call for rational investment, and the whole incident will be characterized as “speculative market fluctuations”, becoming a classic case for investor education.

The logic here is “stability comes first”—excitement can be there, but rules must be followed; innovation is welcome, but you have to bear the risks yourself.

Meme coins live in the third world

The magic of the encryption market lies in the fact that it is neither regulated by the SEC nor constrained by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is a no man's land, a gray financial testing ground spontaneously formed by code, liquidity, and stories.

Here, the American-style social speculation mechanism ( information goes viral + group momentum ) resonates with the Eastern-style grassroots wealth mentality ( + community participation ) magically blend together.

The trading platform is no longer a neutral referee, but has become a “story director”; those KOLs are no longer bystanders, but amplifiers of prices; retail investors are self-indulging in the cycle of algorithms and consensus, and also self-consuming.

What is the most fundamental change? Prices are no longer determined by cash flow, but by the speed of story dissemination and the concentration of consensus. We are witnessing the birth of “emotional capital”—a new form of capital that has no financial reports, only cultural symbols; no fundamentals, only consensus curves; pursuing no rational returns, but only emotional explosions.

When algorithms don't work, emotions are money

The data is harsh: In the first nine months of 2025, 90% of the top Meme coins' market value collapsed; in the second quarter, 65% of new tokens lost more than 90% of their value within six months. It's like the gold rush of the digital age, where most prospectors lose everything, and only those selling shovels make a fortune.

The problem is here: when currencies start telling stories, the underlying logic of global finance is being completely rewritten.

In traditional markets, prices reflect value; in the encryption market, prices create value.

This is both the ultimate form of decentralization and possibly the extreme state of de-responsibilization. When narratives replace cash flow, and emotions become assets, each of us has become a specimen in this experiment.

Where is the way out?

The Web3 industry is now at a crossroads. Should it continue to indulge in the short-term frenzy of “emotional capitalism”? Or should it shift towards the long-term construction of a “value-driven ecosystem”?

The real direction should be: strengthening community governance, introducing a more transparent regulatory framework, and establishing an investor education system. Only in this way can decentralized technology truly promote global financial fairness, rather than becoming a tool for a few to harvest.

The next time you see a big influencer crazily recommending a “hundredfold coin,” ask yourself: Am I participating in financial innovation, or am I paying for someone else's financial freedom?

When currency starts telling stories, what you need most is not the FOMO( of fear of missing out), but the ability to stay calm and think. The market is always there, but your principal may only be there once.