When a foreigner starts learning Chinese to trade in cryptocurrencies

Author: BUBBLE

Binance Life has finally become the first Chinese-language token to be listed on Binance's perpetual contracts.

Anyone working in the Chinese cryptocurrency industry has likely heard of this term over the past two weeks. Since its inception, this "ticker" has been both a joke and a vision. CZ himself said he never expected a simple reply would trigger such a series of events.

First, it sparked discussion with OKX CEO Star. Then, there was the Chinese-language ticker craze for Tron and Solana. A few days ago, the founder of Limitless publicly disclosed the so-called "listing terms," ​​sparking a confrontation between the two chains and exchanges. Finally, Jesse's words, "Start Binance Life mode on Base," put an end to the conflict. What this represents may not just be a single ticker, but rather a deeper cultural shift. This may be the first time a series of high-market-cap memecoins are denominated in Chinese rather than English. What meme culture does this represent? We reached out to 0xBarrry, a Polish trader and co-founder of WOK Labs who manages a community of hundreds of people. What do these foreigners think when they encounter Chinese memes? The conspiracy community encountered Chinese conspiracy coins. This trend was both mysterious and exciting to ordinary traders. Barry, a Polish trader and founder of WOK Labs, recalled, "The first time I saw a Chinese-labeled coin surpass $20 million in market capitalization, I was shocked. On the one hand, I realized this conspiracy coin had great potential. By the time it reached $60 million or even $100 million, European groups were in an uproar. Many people rushed to deposit funds into the Bitcoin Coin (BSC) chain simply because the price had gone up, but they couldn't figure out why." This market sentiment wasn't isolated. Defiflama on-chain data shows that on October 8th, the BSC chain's transaction volume soared to $6.05 billion, reaching the peak of BSC's previous round of machine-coin altcoin sales in 2021, only this time it was led by Chinese memes.

On that day, more than 100,000 new traders participated in this round of memecoins craze, of which nearly 70% made profits. This indeed attracted many "foreigners" to participate in BSC's on-chain activities, and the number of active addresses also increased by nearly 1 million compared with the same period last month. Western investors rushed in only when prices soared, and many only realized their mistake afterward by looking up the Chinese text. Differences in culture and traditional trading habits also led to losses for European and American players for the first time. "Previously, meme investing in Europe often followed American internet culture, characterized by self-deprecating and rebellious humor. However, the sudden rise of Chinese memes has left many Westerners disoriented," said Barry. However, due to his early collaboration with a Chinese team to create WOK Labs, Barry had a pre-existing understanding of how Chinese communities operate, including personal connections and emotional resonance. He began spreading the Chinese narrative within European communities, explaining the differences to more Western traders. Furthermore, the differences in the forms of community participation in Memecoins are also evident. European traders are more likely to participate in conspiracy-style meme projects, which rely heavily on the Ethereum ecosystem and are driven by large-scale market manipulation by well-known influencers or teams. These communities tend to be slower to build, but the right influencers or teams hold a large amount of bottom-tier shares, but also face significant selling pressure. This is why building long-term projects in Europe is difficult. Chinese communities, on the other hand, are easier to build. They prioritize emotion and storytelling (or leading coins). Project owners and meme communities "tell stories" in WeChat groups to build resonance and drive sentiment. This "fair" emotional drive can theoretically lead to longer-lasting communities. Especially during this cycle, it's quite easy for Chinese players. Simply buy popular IPs (or listen to opinions from opinion leaders) and you can "print money at will." A retail investor, who only buys Chinese meme coins, rotated through 65 BNB-chain Chinese meme coins over the course of seven days, initially casting a wide net at prices between $100 and $300 before increasing their holdings in coins with strong momentum, netting approximately $87,000 in a week. This high-frequency, "cast-a-broadnet" strategy reflects, to some extent, the rapid speculation style of most retail investors in the Chinese community in new sectors. At the same time, European and American players are gradually abandoning small-cap memecoins with a market cap of around $500,000 (roughly), and are turning to more certainty targets starting at $5 million. This is also why agencies like Barry, which bridge the East and West, and connect the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese markets with the European and American markets, are becoming increasingly active, helping Asian projects gain trust in the West and European teams enter Asia. He believes that this cultural difference, brought about by personal experience, may be nurturing new opportunities for cross-sector collaboration. From Dogecoin to Chinese meme coins, from mocking memes to ideological memes. From a broader perspective, the memecoin trend is rooted in the collision of different cultural genes. The originator of Western memecoins is Doge, created as a joke by two programmers in 2013. Dogecoin began as a humorous mockery of Bitcoin's seriousness, but ultimately, thanks to celebrity influence (like Elon Musk) and enduring community enthusiasm, it reached a peak market capitalization of $88.8 billion in May 2021. Pepecoin experienced a similar success. A cultural meme born from the 4chan community, it quickly became popular after its launch in early 2023, with its market capitalization briefly exceeding $1 billion. The Pepe project relied entirely on online cultural buzz, with no pre-sale, no team allocation, and no roadmap. The team also stated that the coin had "no intrinsic value and was for entertainment purposes only." This value system also influenced a large number of subsequent Solana memecoins, such as the nihilistic Fartcoin and Uselesscoin, or Neet, which embodies Western internet culture's fondness for "subversion of real-world values" and black humor, or memes like TikTok's "Hot 67." Solana memes captured investors' imaginations with their graphic imagery and rebellious spirit, dominating the attention economy's memecoin era for a long time. This, in turn, led to a lack of cultural judgment of these tokens in Chinese-dominated regions, leading to biased views. Chinese memecoins, on the other hand, exhibit different characteristics, often rooted in resonance and identity projection. For example, tokens like "Humble Xiao He" and "Customer Service Xiao He" use the self-deprecating humor of working-class people to mock social realities. The "Xiu Xian" series reflects Chinese netizens' dream of escaping reality, while "Binance Life" directly carries the dream of getting rich overnight in the crypto market. Of course, their common denominator is their connection to the government. This is a cultural difference in mindset. For Chinese people, this is called "broadening the path," while for most European and American players, such names mean their ceiling is limited by the willingness of the "system" to manipulate the market. However, the explosive growth of Chinese memecoins, represented by "Binance Life," actually directly benefits from this emotional resonance. Its slogan compares Binance Life to the previously popular "Apple Life." This innovative narrative is clearly different from Dogecoin's satire, appealing more to loyalty and sentiment. Once this impression becomes widely known, the ticker becomes ingrained within the system. When it's mocked, officials are forced to "pump the market." This may be the sentiment of many who still hold onto the coin after the sell-off. This meme craze wasn't entirely spontaneously fueled by retail investors; it was also the result of careful nurturing by the Binance ecosystem. From He Yi's joke and CZ's response to a series of official interactions on Fourmeme and Binance's launch of the MemeRush platform, positive news was released in a step-by-step, phased manner, ensuring the release of high-market-cap memecoins, mid-term liquidity, and long-term sustainability over time. This incorporated the previously chaotic issuance of memecoins into an official system, bringing a more organized atmosphere to the frenzy while keeping the market's attention focused on the BSC chain for a prolonged period. The enthusiasm spread from a single project to the entire BSC ecosystem, further fueling the public's Degen mentality, believing the next trade could make them multi-millionaires. This "upward ladder" expectation explains why, at the beginning of this market cycle, when multiple popular projects emerged, we didn't notice a significant liquidity siphoning effect between the various projects. This significant step-by-step wealth creation effect, driven by both official and community support, is a testament to the structured listing expectations behind Chinese meme coins and the market consensus reaching a level unimaginable just a few months ago. In contrast, Western meme coins are more often driven by a whim of social media or driven by conspiracies. However, the BSC ecosystem, through the combined efforts of founders, the platform ecosystem, and the community, has transformed this frenzy into a blatant "wealth creation movement." The public opinion war among trading platforms, the dispute over listing fees, and the easing of Sino-US tensions also triggered a fierce public relations battle between trading platforms. On October 11, 2025, Jesse tweeted, calling on everyone to boycott centralized trading platforms that charge 2% to 9% listing fees. Three days later, on October 14, CJ Hetherington, founder of Limitless Labs, a prediction market project invested by Coinbase, revealed on X that during negotiations with the trading platform, he discovered that in order to list on Binance, the project would need to stake 2 million BNB and pay high fees, including an 8% airdrop and marketing allocation for the total token supply, as well as a $250,000 security deposit. He compared Binance and Coinbase, arguing that Coinbase prioritizes the project's inherent value, while Binance's approach is similar to "listing fees." Binance quickly issued a denial, calling the accusation "completely untrue and defamatory," emphasizing that "Binance never charges listing fees," and threatening legal action against the internal conversations leaked by CJ. Subsequently, Binance issued a more restrained statement, acknowledging that its initial response was excessive but reiterating that it does not charge any listing fees. As the debate escalated, Coinbase also responded swiftly. Jesse Pollak, head of Base's blockchain, publicly stated on social media: "Listing a project on an exchange should be free." But that was when public opinion began to reverse, and Coinbase, seemingly out of spite, officially announced the inclusion of BNB in ​​its list of future supported tokens. This marked the first time in history that a token issued on a direct competitor's mainnet had been supported. Binance founder CZ welcomed this move on social media and encouraged Coinbase to list more BSC chain projects. CJ, who had previously exposed the terms, also began to show goodwill, and Jesse Pollak's attitude also took a 180-degree turn. He first released a Base App demonstration video on X, in which Base App even used "Binance Life" as an example token. Pollak also joked in Chinese, "Start Binance Life mode on the Base App," and replied to CZ's tweet, "Binance Life + Base Life = the strongest combination." This series of actions was interpreted by the industry as a breakthrough in the Chinese and American crypto camps, and also brought a long-awaited golden dog to the Base chain.

It can be said that when the trading volume and attention brought by the Asian market reach a certain scale, Western transactions have to take the initiative to approach the Chinese community, and the competition among trading platforms is also intertwined with cultural narratives.

The cognition and reaction of Eastern and Western communities

The mainstream media in Europe and the United States paid close attention to this incident. At the same time, many Western retail investors also lamented in the group that "we can't understand why the coin price has risen." Most people did not rush to buy in until the price took off. Even communities like Barry, which have in-depth exchanges with the Chinese system, often encountered the problem of "knowing the meaning but not the meaning" when foreseeing Memecoins with internal cultural significance. It can be seen that for overseas investors, Chinese elements once became a new barrier to entry. This wave of activity also highlights the concept of "language as opportunity." For the cryptocurrency community, the cultural and emotional connections behind different languages ​​are inherently valuable. This is the first time that European and American investors will need to understand Chinese culture to participate in this exciting market.

Recently, a video series of foreigners learning Chinese and buying memecoins was very popular.

However, Barry believes that "I think the Chinese meme market is nearing its end. The longer this cycle lasts, the more severe the PTSD it will bring to traders. We can see that these memecoins have begun to evolve towards smaller market capitalization and faster sector rotation."

However, at the same time, he also said, "English and Chinese are already the most important components of the meme market, and this situation will not change soon. China has a larger market and is more easily driven by emotions. The European market tends to lag behind. I think English tickers It may return, but it will become more integrated with Asian culture. Inspired by this wave of Chinese memes, they will develop a more Chinese sense of humor, symbolism, and aesthetics." In the future, to capture the next wave of memecoin opportunities, relying solely on opportunity will no longer be enough; a deep understanding of the language and culture of different regional communities will also be required. AI can currently help with cross-lingual communication, for example, by automatically generating Chinese memes and translating social media posts to accelerate information dissemination. However, AI cannot replace a deep understanding of cultural context. We may see a more multipolar crypto world, with more and more "golden dogs" of Chinese tickers emerging, such as Base and Solana. There will be new trends of integration and mutual learning between Western and Eastern communities, but there may also be the possibility of the emergence of separate, autonomous ecosystems. New opportunities may lie within these cultural gaps.