@yuyue_chris is an active Altcoin investor and trader in the Web3 field. From entering the market with a 3,000 RMB capital in 2022, she has now become a professional trader. Relying on her keen market insights and a continuous learning attitude, she has transformed from a novice to an OG within two years. She is currently an important member of several top-tier Chinese crypto communities and also operates her own community.
OKX specially invited her as a guest speaker for the "OKX's Friends" series, to share her trading insights and in-depth thoughts on the Meme track, hoping to inspire the audience.
The "OKX's Friends" series is a special column planned by OKX, hosted by OKX's official community ambassador Mercy (@Mercy_okx), aiming to uncover the stories, industry insights, and lessons learned from KOLs with different backgrounds, for new users to learn and reference.
I. The Crypto Journey from Scratch
Mercy (@Mercy_okx): Can you share with us how you entered the crypto currency field?
Yuyue (@yuyue_chris): I joined the crypto space in March 2022, during the bear-bull transition period. As a business student, I initially wanted to find an internship and started writing some Web3 investment research. I truly entered the space when I saw a friend's contract trading screenshot on their Moments, and asked "What is this app?", then received an affiliate link. At that time, I only had 3-5,000 in capital, but it was quickly wiped out by a 20x leveraged contract, leaving only a little ETH on-chain. I didn't dare tell my parents that I had lost all my living expenses, so I had to find another way.
Mercy: What made you persist? Which communities had the greatest impact on you?
Yuyue: The turning point came with the Nation3 airdrop. At that time, I saw many KOLs on Twitter forwarding it and asking everyone to leave their ENS addresses. I followed and left a few, and unexpectedly received the airdrop. This made me realize that I must obtain positive feedback, otherwise it would be difficult to persist in the constant loss situation. Since then, I have been constantly iterating my information sources, joining more communities to meet more people, and actively reviewing every opportunity.
Regarding communities, one is the scriptdotmoney Robot DAO, which is the Huangpu Military Academy of top Chinese communities, from which many current community leaders have emerged, such as Laser Cat. Secondly, it is the 321 DAO of Zishi, which is also the Huangpu Military Academy of Chinese KOLs, where I learned a lot. Finally, it is Feng Mi's 33 DAO, which has evolved from an airdrop organization into an elite organization integrating investment research, execution, and investment, and Feng Mi's words "The most important thing for an organization is internal cohesion and external influence" have greatly inspired me.
Mercy: How did the transformation from an early Alpha Hunter to an investor and professional trader happen?
Yuyue: In the early days as an Alpha Hunter, I mainly shared various arbitrage and airdrop opportunities. Understanding the rules is important, just like studying law, you have to understand all the terms to find the loopholes. And the loopholes often contain the best profit opportunities. For example, the recent Penguin airdrop, half a year ago I was one of the few bloggers in the Chinese-speaking area who publicly recommended doing the Penguin Layer Zero cross-chain task, and I was able to receive nearly $10,000 in airdrop rewards with very little capital loss. At that time, I was observing new projects every day, to the extent that many people's impression of me was "I was already following this project when it had so few followers".
But as the capital size grew, the trading strategy has also been evolving. Now in the offensive strategy, I mainly use large positions in BTC and ETH as the base, using them as collateral for contracts, but keeping the leverage below 3x. I also invest in the primary market, as I used to work at IDG and am more familiar with the primary market.
II. In-depth Insights into the Meme Track
Mercy: How do you view the big outbreak of Memecoins in this bull market?
Yuyue:This needs to be viewed from the overall narrative shift in the crypto space. I believe there are now two main logic lines: the asset line and the speculation line. The asset line revolves around BTC, stablecoins and other assets with real stable value; the speculation line is mainly based on Meme, representing a kind of popular speculative carnival. When BTC hits new highs, these two lines intertwine, forming the current prosperity.
From the earliest public chains, to DeFi, GameFi, and then NFT, now is the era of pump.fun. The popularization of cryptocurrencies does not require complex DeFi formulas, but rather a more down-to-earth approach. Meme happens to meet this need. And on the asset side, BTC itself as a kind of non-interest-bearing strong consensus asset may also be understood as a kind of "meme". However, a large number of new holders choose BTC not only to participate in the consensus, but also to seek asset preservation and even appreciation in the process of resisting real inflation.
Mercy: Why can Meme achieve such deep integration with Gen Z culture?
Yuyue: This is related to the cognitive characteristics of the human brain. People are naturally drawn to novelty and will constantly raise the threshold of stimulation for the same type of stimuli. Meme provides simple, fast and rich stimuli, while dissolving the seriousness of finance, allowing people to have a "playful" mentality. This is a kind of entertainment-ization of finance and financialization of gaming. For example, a hundred-page project research paper and a short and interesting slogan, which one will the audience be more receptive to and more addictive? Obviously the latter has already been validated by the hundreds of millions of users in the short video era.
Mercy: The emergence of this round of Pump.fun seems to have become the infrastructure for the Meme supercycle, and now in addition to Solana, other major ecosystems have also launched their own versions of pump.fun. What changes do you think this high-frequency and fast-paced model will bring?
Yuyue: I think the focus is not on the pump.fun infrastructure itself, but on the more macro changes. With the relaxation of regulations, we are seeing a separation between the centralized exchanges, ETFs, US stocks and the on-chain landscape. In the future, more and more people may buy mainstream coins through ETFs, while the on-chain will be mainly speculative trading of Meme.
Furthermore, I believe the current regulatory environment is actually more favorable for Meme. You can see that major exchanges have been frequently listing Meme coins recently, which means the compliance risk of Meme itself is relatively small. But it's worth noting that people's freshness for something will eventually fade, so sector rotation will be very fast, whether it's the rotation between DeFi and Meme, or between value coins and Meme coins, or even the internal rotation within the Meme sector.
Mercy (@Mercy_okx): Compared to traditional VC projects, what unique advantages do you think Meme projects have?
Yuyue (@yuyue_chris): This is an interesting question. In fact, even for new VC projects, even if they want to launch a serious product or protocol, the team itself must also understand the value and importance of Meme. If they cannot cleverly utilize Meme, in terms of outside buyers, except for the Trump concept, any other Altcoin in the circle will find it difficult to compete with BTC ETF, ETH ETF and mainstream coins in the long run; in terms of inside buyers, if they cannot cleverly utilize Meme, they will find it difficult to compete with Meme.
I can give a few examples of projects that have done better:
• $AVA uses the cute white-haired loli image to build an organic community for the AI Agent product @HoloworldAI
• $MOVE utilizes various Meme promotions for @movementlabsxyz, and the founder himself has the topicality and legendary status of the Gen Z group
• The "unconventional" Meme style of $BERA, where every event is very decadent and fakechain culture, etc.
Mercy: When screening Meme projects, what dimensions do you consider?
Yuyue:I mainly consider three aspects: The first is the narrative level, which can be divided into grand narratives (politics, economics, AI), small but beautiful cults (specific images or niche cultures), and short-term hot spots.
The second is the chip structure. Large-cap projects need to pay attention to the dispersion of chips, which determines the strength of consensus; but early projects should not be overly dispersed, which is easy to cause sustained selling pressure.
The third is community building. There is a need for high-quality community leaders, preferably long-term diamond hands who can continuously recharge the community's faith. If the early community is all flippers, it is difficult to establish long-term value.
III. Advice for Beginners
Mercy: What advice do you have for new entrants to the crypto space?
Yuyue: First, you need to establish your own information channels, but be wary of information cocoons. I suggest diligently browsing Twitter and researching the early layout behind each hot spot. Secondly, do not over-rely on copy-trading tools, as you cannot fully replicate others' positions and timing.
Regarding continuous learning and growth, the key is to gain positive feedback, even if it's small. From my experience, very few people can get particularly high returns on a single project, it's more of a linear growth process. Explosive wealth growth is often survivor bias, while linear growth is the prerequisite for exponential growth. Traders need to be aware that this market is always changing, the only constant is to maintain a learning mindset and find your own rhythm and circle. It's hard to go it alone, real growth requires mutual learning and progress in quality communities.
IV. Impressions and Suggestions for OKX
Mercy (@Mercy_okx): Please share your impressions of OKX, including your experience with the products and interactions with the team.
Yuyue (@yuyue_chris): The core impression I have of OKX is the fast product iteration speed. This is reflected in several aspects: Firstly, the functions of the CEX system, such as the UI overhaul of the finance section, which felt unfamiliar at first but made the product logic clearer after the update. Secondly, the Web3 wallet section, which has iterated very quickly and become increasingly comprehensive.
Another point is that OKX attaches great importance to user experience and needs, with the team deeply engaged in the community. You often appear in various groups to collect user feedback and respond quickly, which has left me with a very good impression.
Mercy: Regarding OKX's future development, especially in the integration of CEX and DEX, do you have any suggestions?
Yuyue: Regarding CeDeFi, I think it depends on the specific definition. For example, some exchanges allow the use of interest-bearing stablecoins as contract margin, which is a feature the exchange module can consider.
I think one thing OKX has done well is to clearly distinguish the functions of on-chain and within the exchange. The Web3 wallet section is independent of the exchange system and has been done exceptionally well, with features closely aligned with actual needs. As a professional meme user, I hope there can be a faster new feature addition mechanism. Although it's already done very well, for some time-sensitive projects, faster support would be better.
Particularly worth commending is OKX's performance in multi-chain products, which is unparalleled. Many public chains don't have particularly good native wallets, but OKX's web-based wallet has a great experience on these chains, such as Aptos. I suggest you can continue to strengthen this advantage and provide better wallet support for emerging public chains.
Mercy: We are exploring new features that allow CEX users to trade DEX tokens and DEX users to trade CEX tokens. What do you think of this direction?
Yuyue: This idea sounds very innovative. This not only allows centralized exchange users to have more choices, but also provides more liquidity for DEXs, making the on-chain trading experience smoother. I look forward to seeing the specific implementation of this feature.
This article is for reference only. This article only represents the author's views and does not represent the position of OKX. This article is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold digital assets; (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of such information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) involves high risks and may be subject to significant fluctuations. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for your financial situation. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals for your specific situation. Please be responsible for understanding and complying with applicable local laws and regulations.
