The story behind Chinese Meme coins going viral: Why are Western traders suddenly needing to learn Chinese?

In the past two weeks, if you’ve been involved in the crypto space, you probably can’t have missed the term “Binance Life.” What started as a joke has evolved into a full-blown celebration across the ecosystem. CZ himself said he didn’t expect a simple reply to cause such a stir.

It all began with discussions from the OKX CEO, then Tron and Solana followed suit by promoting Chinese Tickers, followed by a founder of a certain exchange revealing listing fee clauses, sparking confrontations between two chains and platforms… culminating in a comment on the Base chain: “Start your Binance Life mode.” It seems like just a crypto joke, but behind it lies something deeper—this might be the first large-scale market dominated by high-market-cap Meme coins in Chinese rather than English.

Data Speaks: How Crazy Is This Market Rally

Polish trader Barry, founder of WOK Labs, witnessed all of this firsthand. He recalls being shocked the first time he saw a Chinese-labeled coin break through a $20 million market cap. When it continued soaring to $60 million, even $100 million, the European community was already buzzing—everyone rushing to fund BSC chains, for a simple reason: Prices are rising, but no one really understands why.

On-chain data confirms this frenzy. On October 8, BSC’s daily trading volume surged to $6.05 billion, temporarily returning to the peak of the 2021 meme coin craze. The difference this time? Led by Chinese Meme coins.

Over 100,000 new traders flooded in, nearly 70% of whom made profits. Active addresses increased by nearly 1 million compared to the same period last month. This wave attracted many foreigners, many of whom only realized what they bought after “checking Chinese.”

Eastern and Western Playbooks Are Entirely Different Systems

Hidden behind this is a deep cultural and investment logic gap.

Western Meme coins emphasize self-deprecation and rebellion—for example, Dogecoin was originally a parody of Bitcoin’s serious attitude. Pepe coin is a product of 4chan culture, driven entirely by internet memes, with no presale, no team allocation, no roadmap. These projects often rely on big KOLs to pump, community building is slow, but they carry a high risk of large dumps.

Chinese Meme coin play is completely different. Tokens like “Humble Little H” or “Customer Service Xiao He” mock reality with self-deprecating humor about workers. The “Cultivation” series reflects escapism fantasies. “Binance Life” directly embodies the dream of overnight riches. A common feature of these tokens?—They all imply some connection to official entities.

For Chinese investors, this is called “broadening the road.” For Western players, it means their profit ceiling is tightly controlled by whether “the system is willing to pump.”

Why Chinese Communities Can Build Faster and More Stable

Barry’s insight is profound: Chinese communities focus more on emotional resonance and storytelling. Project teams tell stories in WeChat groups, using emotions to rally people, and under the premise of “relatively fair” conditions, they push emotional decision-making. Theoretically, this can lead to more sustainable community vitality.

Moreover, the entire ecosystem’s organization is more structured. From He Yi’s joke, CZ’s reply, to official interactions, and MemeRush platform—step-by-step, phased release of positive signals—they integrate the originally chaotic Meme coin issuance into official systems, making the celebration more organized. This creates an “upward ladder” expectation—everyone is thinking, “The next one might be my chance to become a millionaire.”

A retail investor data point illustrates this well: he rotated through 65 Chinese Meme coins on BNB Chain within 7 days, starting with $100–$300 spread across projects, adding positions in trending ones, and netting about $87,000 in a week. This “casting a wide net” approach reflects Chinese retail investors’ quick speculative style on new tracks.

Meanwhile, Western players are starting to abandon small-cap projects of around $500,000 and shifting toward targets starting at $5 million—they’ve learned the game and now pursue certainty.

What Does the Publicity Battle Between Platforms Reveal?

This wave also triggered a PR showdown among exchanges.

On October 11, a platform executive tweeted about resisting centralized exchanges’ listing fees of 2%-9%. Three days later, a founder of a prediction market project revealed on X that listing on top exchanges requires staking 2 million BNB, paying an 8% token airdrop, and depositing $250,000 as a guarantee.

The public reaction was immediate. Top exchanges quickly denied it, claiming “completely false and defamatory,” asserting they “never charge listing fees,” and threatened legal action.

But at the same time, another infrastructure provider issued a statement: “Projects should be able to list on exchanges with zero fees.” Then—almost out of spite—they officially announced support for a competitor’s mainnet token, marking a historic first.

The leading exchange founders welcomed this and encouraged listing more related projects. The whistleblower founder also began to show goodwill, and the infrastructure provider even used “Binance Life” as an example token in a demo, joking in Chinese, “Start your Binance Life mode on XXX.”

Industry consensus is that this is a thawing of relations between the US, China, and Canada crypto camps.

Why Language Has Become a New Dimension of Competition

Mainstream Western media paid close attention to this. Many Western retail traders in groups complained, “Prices went up but we can’t understand them.” Even communities like Barry’s, with deep understanding of Chinese cultural systems, often get stumped when predicting culturally meaningful Meme coins—they only see the surface, not the core.

For overseas investors, Chinese elements once became a new barrier to entry. Some communities even developed tools like “Chinese-to-English translation dog tools” to bridge the information gap.

This emphasizes a key concept: Language is opportunity. The cultural emotions behind different languages are valuable resources. This is the first time that Western investors must understand Chinese culture to participate fully in this feast.

What’s Next

Barry believes this Chinese Meme wave is nearing its end because the longer it lasts, the more psychological damage it causes to traders. These coins are already evolving into small-cap, rapidly rotating sectors.

But he also says: “English and Chinese are already the two main components of the Meme market, and this won’t change soon. The Chinese market is larger and more emotion-driven. The European market is relatively lagging. I think English Tickers may return, but they will become more integrated with Asian culture—more Chinese-style humor, symbolism, and aesthetics.”

In the future, relying solely on luck won’t be enough. Capturing the next wave of opportunities requires deep understanding of the language and culture of different communities. AI might help with cross-language dissemination—automatically generating memes, translating updates, speeding up information spread—but ultimately, it cannot replace deep cultural contextual understanding.

We may see a more multipolar crypto world: more chains featuring Chinese Tickers like “Golden Dog,” with East-West communities both blending and learning from each other, or possibly each developing their own ecosystems. Within these cultural gaps, there may lie the next opportunities.