Why is Chinese Meme Coin so popular?

I. What Are We Witnessing?

In early 2026, the crypto market is experiencing an unprecedented cultural shift:

Western traders on X are searching for the meaning of “我踏马来了,” trying to understand why these five Chinese characters underpin a token worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Memes like “Laozi” and “Binance Life,” once exclusive to the Chinese internet, now dominate discussions in the global crypto community.

This is the first time Chinese subculture has gone global as a financial asset and the first instance where an emoji or a slang phrase can attract hundreds of millions in real capital within 72 hours.

Yet, these tokens lack any traditional value foundation. There’s no whitepaper, no development team, no use case, and not even a coherent narrative. Their market caps can leap from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars in 72 hours—or be cut in half in just three hours. All traditional financial valuation tools—P/E ratios, cash flow analysis, technical roadmaps—simply do not apply.

Instead, a new pricing logic has emerged: attention equals value, consensus is truth, and sentiment drives liquidity.

He Yi replied on X, “Wish you a Binance Life,” and four days later, that token’s market cap hit $524 million. On-chain data shows someone entered with $3,000 and saw their holdings surge to $1.6 million. Countless others bought at the top and lost everything when the price collapsed.

This is far more than a simple speculative bubble. The term “bubble” is too simplistic—it suggests an “irrational” deviation, as if things would revert to normal once reason returns.

But when consensus itself is the only anchor and everyone is playing the same zero-sum game, what does “normal” even mean?

Meme coin charts are the most honest record of this era’s collective sentiment. They capture not just price swings, but the anxieties, mania, and disillusionment of a generation—some find life-changing opportunities, while many more are left with permanent losses.

II. From Internet Joke to Financial Asset

In December 2013, IBM engineer Billy Markus and Adobe employee Jackson Palmer spent two hours copying Bitcoin’s code, swapped the logo for a Shiba Inu, and named it Dogecoin.

Their goal was to satirize the crypto speculation craze of the time. Unexpectedly, this “joke” surged 300% within 72 hours of launch, with Reddit flooded by tipping activity—people used it to buy pizza for strangers and tip content creators.

Dogecoin’s success exposed a disruptive truth: in decentralized finance, consensus alone can create value.

You don’t need to build a real product or solve a specific problem. If enough people believe something has value, it does. The most effective tool for building consensus is a cultural symbol that triggers collective emotion.

From 2013 to 2021, meme coins stayed on the fringes.

Early imitators like Nyancoin (Nyan Cat) and Coinye (a Kanye West tribute) faded quickly, failing because they relied too heavily on a single meme and lacked community engagement and evolving narratives.

The turning point came in 2021, when SHIB (Shiba Inu) delivered over 100,000x returns in six months. More importantly, SHIB demonstrated that new entrants could “stack narratives”—layering new storylines onto existing memes—to capture market share.

By 2023, platforms like Pump.fun enabled one-click token launches, bringing meme coins into the era of industrial-scale production. Thousands of new coins launched daily on Solana, from PEPE’s “Sad Frog” to various AI and animal-themed coins. The market became more fragmented and short-lived than ever before.

But at this stage, meme coins were still largely derivatives of Western internet culture, with Chinese communities mostly following rather than leading.

The 2026 Chinese meme coin boom marked a new mutation. No longer content to imitate Doge or Pepe, it transformed native Chinese memes—like the raw phrase “我踏马来了,” the blessing “Binance Life,” and the playful reworking of the traditional “Laozi”—into tradable financial assets.

This transformation is a collective pushback from the Chinese crypto community after years of “cultural discount”:

There’s no longer any need to explain why a meme is funny to the West—consensus forms within our own language and culture.

III. The Real Forces Driving the Frenzy

Psychological Mechanisms: Dopamine and the Fantasy of Changing Fate

Of all the forces fueling meme coin mania, psychological mechanisms are paramount. This isn’t “irrationality” in the classic sense, but a rational choice magnified by circumstance—when wealth accumulation becomes increasingly rigid and traditional investment returns keep declining, the “extreme odds” of meme coins become a powerful psychological temptation.

The data behind “Binance Life” makes this clear. On October 4, 2025, the token launched on BNB Chain. He Yi replied to the community with “Wish you a Binance Life,” followed by CZ. In just four days, the market cap soared from a tiny sum to $524 million, with early participants seeing over 6,000x returns. On-chain data shows address 0x8844 invested only 5 BNB (about $3,000), and within days, the value soared to $1.6 million.

This “3,000 to 1.6 million” wealth legend overwhelms rational argument—it hits ordinary investors’ psychological defenses directly.

When social media is filled with screenshots of “someone turned $85 into $140,000” and “smart money made a killing” stories circulate, people systematically overestimate their own odds of being the next winner, ignoring the silent majority who lose.

This cognitive bias is amplified in meme coin markets. Blockchain transparency makes “get rich” stories verifiable, while the stories of loss get drowned out.

On a deeper level, the driving force is emotional compensation.

As global economic growth slows and social mobility stagnates, people feel squeezed by present anxieties and future uncertainties. Buying meme coins becomes, on a psychological level, a “ticket to change your fate.”

Traditional investing requires long-term accumulation, risk management, and expertise. Meme coins only require “clicking at the right time.” This simplified decision path is itself a comfort—people believe wealth can be gained without existing resources or social connections.

But the harshest reality is the game structure itself.

The meme coin market is almost pure PvP (player versus player)—every profit equals someone else’s loss. This zero-sum game breeds a “chain of suspicion”: I worry you’ll sell first, you worry I’ll sell first, and everyone tries to guess when others will exit.

This creates a paradox—the more rational the trader, the more likely they are to exit during the first rally. They know consensus is fragile and liquidity can vanish instantly.

This is why most meme coins peak right after launch: everyone’s playing musical chairs, but there were never enough chairs to go around.

Dissemination Mechanisms: Attention Dominance and Valuing Traffic

If psychology explains “why people buy,” dissemination explains “why this coin and not that one.” In a market with thousands of new tokens daily, dissemination efficiency is a life-or-death competitive edge.

Chinese meme coins’ edge starts with the infectiousness of their symbols.

“我踏马来了” condenses the Chinese internet’s directness and emotional release, instantly conveying a rebellious tone. The traditional symbol “Laozi” is reimagined with both self-mockery and bravado. “Binance Life” turns a business brand into a playful blessing, forming an intimate community code.

These symbols share three traits: visual simplicity (perfect for emojis and logos), emotional intensity (fast resonance), and semantic ambiguity (room for reinterpretation).

But symbols are just the start—real dissemination depth depends on how traffic is valued.

In meme coins, a harsh but real formula prevails: traffic = valuation.

A reply from He Yi on X, an emoji from CZ—these seemingly casual acts inject “liquidity expectations” into a token. The “Binance Life” case proves this: after He Yi’s October 4 tweet, over 14 whale addresses with more than $1 million each entered the token within 24 hours, and on-chain transactions jumped 300%.

Top KOL endorsements create consensus—everyone assumes others will buy because of the tweet, so they rush in, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even more concerning, dissemination now forms a rapid cross-platform loop.

A message first spreads in WeChat or Telegram groups, then appears as an explainer on Xiaohongshu, followed by discussion in the English X community (often with mistranslations and new interpretations). On-chain data shows whales entering, and exchange charts are screenshotted and recirculated on social media. Each round reignites FOMO (fear of missing out).

This entire cycle can complete in 6–12 hours, making “calm analysis” seem powerless.

But there’s a core paradox here:

When meme coin dissemination peaks—trending on Weibo or covered by mainstream financial media—the attention dividend is likely exhausted.

The most valuable phase in a meme coin’s lifecycle is when “small-scale consensus is spreading,” not when “everyone knows.” Once dissemination passes the tipping point, the market enters “buyer exhaustion” as everyone who could be convinced has already entered.

This is why experienced traders exit when mainstream media report on a token—the dissemination curve has peaked.

Social Attitudes: The “Anti-VC” Narrative and Virtual Tribes

The meme coin boom can be seen as a symbolic grassroots financial rebellion against elite capital. This isn’t an organized movement, but a spontaneous collective expression through market action.

The “anti-VC narrative” is the clearest example of this resistance.

In traditional crypto projects, venture capital (VC) firms typically acquire large token allocations at low prices early on, cashing out slowly through vesting and releases, leaving retail investors at the bottom of the value chain.

Meme coin launches (where everyone buys at nearly the same time and price) are seen as morally superior—a rejection of traditional financial hierarchy.

“Binance Life,” the leading project of this Chinese meme wave, is popular partly because it launched on the grassroots platform Four.Meme, not through private or presale allocations. This is a key part of community consensus.

On a deeper level, there’s a social psychology of “virtual tribalism.”

Buying “Laozi” gives holders not just a position, but membership in a virtual tribe sharing a cultural symbol. In this tribe, shouting “Laozi is the cultural ceiling of Chinese memes” builds belonging, and making emojis or voting in the community shows loyalty.

This tribal identity is why meme coins can survive crashes—as long as community consensus holds, the token retains the narrative of a comeback.

But we must recognize the contradictions in this narrative.

In practice, a minority with information and capital advantages—the “smart money”—often control the game. Retail investors who enter after seeing social media news may buy at prices tens or hundreds of times higher than early holders. The real rules are still set by those at the top of the information pyramid.

Philosophical Roots: The Financialization of Nihilism

The core question of meme coins is: when we spend real money on a digital symbol with no utility, what are we actually buying?

Traditional finance says asset value comes from discounted future cash flows, or from scarcity and utility. Meme coins overturn this logic—they produce no cash flow, have no practical function (not even as a basic payment tool), and their value is entirely based on the circular logic that “others believe it has value.”

This structure echoes Jean Baudrillard’s theory of “simulacra”: in postmodern society, symbols are detached from reality and become self-referential simulacra.

Meme coins are pure simulacra: they don’t refer to any real economic value, but as long as enough people believe, they do have exchange value—right now.

This “consensus is truth” logic is both absurd and unassailable—because in a decentralized, unregulated market, the power to define value is decentralized.

From a more radical perspective, meme coin mania reflects the financialization of nihilism.

As grand narratives collapse, belief in technological progress bringing a better future fades, and “long-term value investing” repeatedly loses to luck and timing, “meaninglessness” itself becomes a kind of meaning.

This mindset is especially common among Gen Z investors, who grew up in a low-growth era after the financial crisis, lack faith in “steady wealth accumulation,” and embrace high-risk, high-volatility games.

IV. The Financial Core: Who Really Makes Money in This Game?

So, who profits in this frenzy—and who loses?

First, traditional valuation frameworks are useless here. P/E and P/B ratios can’t explain why a token with no cash flow is worth hundreds of millions. Instead, social media mentions, KOL influence, and community activity are the metrics that matter. When a token’s market cap far exceeds the attention it can sustain, a sharp correction is usually imminent.

Second, beware of the “liquidity trap.” When the meme coin narrative peaks—everyone is talking and mainstream media are reporting—it’s the dissemination peak, but also the inflection point for liquidity. All potential buyers are in, leaving only existing funds to fight for exits. Any disturbance can trigger a cascade of selling.

The December 10, 2025 “He Yi account hack” is a classic example. Hackers used the compromised account to post fake endorsements, causing a token to spike. They bought in with about 19,000 USDT across two wallets and sold at the top for about $43,000, netting $55,000. After CZ debunked the news on X, the token crashed 78% in 30 minutes, trapping countless latecomers.

In meme coin markets, building consensus takes time, but collapse is instant.

Ultimately, meme coins are still a high-risk zero-sum game. Behind every “turned $85 into $140,000” story are hundreds of silent losers whose assets went to zero. On-chain data shows the reality: behind the 14 million-dollar profit addresses in “Binance Life” are over 47,000 losing addresses, with a median loss of 62%.

In a system with no value creation—only value transfer—wealth inevitably concentrates.

V. Where Do We Stand?

The 2026 Chinese meme coin boom is, at its core, a barometer of the era’s mood. It records this generation’s anxiety, humor, defiance, and greed in the most direct and unfiltered way.

• In a time where certainty is increasingly rare, people crave extreme uncertainty to offset the monotony of daily life;
• In a society with rigid social mobility, even a game most are destined to lose is more appealing than simply “accepting fate.”

This craze will eventually fade, like every speculative bubble in history. But its imprint will remain.

Consensus can be financialized, cultural symbols can be priced, and attention can be traded.

No matter how we judge it, one thing is clear—

We have entered an unprecedented era, where the very definition of value is being rewritten.

Disclaimer:

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