Guest message:

Reflect on what scarcity is and what your own moat is. Making money is not rare, because there are too many people making money, what is rare is constantly reviewing why you are making money, and having a logical and methodological system of continuous review and replication.

@yuyue_chris is an active investor and trader in the Web3 field. From entering the market with a capital of 3,000 yuan in 2022, to becoming a professional trader now, she has transformed from a novice to an OG in just two years, relying on her keen market insight and a continuous learning attitude. She is currently an important member of several top Chinese 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 everyone.

The "OKX's Friends" series is a special column planned by OKX, hosted by OKX 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 cryptocurrency field?

Yuyue (@yuyue_chris): I entered 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 really got into it when I saw a friend posting about a trading platform's contract in their circle, and I asked "What's this app?" and received an affiliate link. At that time, I only had 3-5,000 yuan 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 biggest impact on you?

Yuyue: The turning point came with the Nation3 airdrop. At the time, I saw a lot of KOLs on Twitter forwarding it and asking people to leave their ENS addresses. I followed along and actually received the airdrop. This made me realize that I must get positive feedback, otherwise it would be difficult to persist in a constant loss-making situation. Since then, I have been iterating my information sources, joining more communities to meet more people, and actively reviewing every opportunity.

As for the 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. Another is 321 DAO by Zishi, which is also a Huangpu Military Academy for Chinese KOLs, where I learned a lot. The last one 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 inspired me greatly: "The most important thing for an organization is to have cohesion internally and influence externally."

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 grew, the trading strategy also evolved. Now in my offensive strategy, I mainly use large positions in BTC and ETH as the base, using them as collateral for futures contracts, but keeping the leverage below 3x. I also invest in the primary market because 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 think 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, while the speculation line is mainly based on Meme, representing a kind of popular speculative carnival. When BTC hits new highs, these two lines intertwine to form the current prosperity.

From the earliest public chains, to DeFi, GameFi, and now NFTs, this 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 just meets this need. And on the asset side, BTC itself as a strong consensus asset without interest can 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 for the same type of stimuli. Meme provides simple, fast and rich stimuli, while also dissolving the seriousness of finance, allowing people to have a "playful" mentality. This is a kind of entertainment-ized finance and financialized gaming. For example, which would the audience be more interested in, a lengthy project research article or a short and interesting slogan? 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 other major ecosystems have also launched their own versions of pump.fun. What changes do you think this high-frequency, fast-paced model will bring?

Yuyue: I think the focus is not on the pump.fun infrastructure itself, but on the broader changes. With the relaxation of regulations, we are seeing a separation between centralized exchanges, ETFs, US stocks and on-chain patterns. In the future, more and more people may buy mainstream coins through ETFs, while on-chain will be mainly speculative trading on 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, 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 VC's new 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 you cannot cleverly use Meme, in terms of external buying, except for the Trump concept, any Altcoin in the circle will find it difficult to compete with BTC ETF, ETH ETF and mainstream cryptocurrencies in the long run. In terms of internal buying, if you cannot cleverly use Meme, it will be difficult to compete with meme.

I can give a few examples of those who have done better:

•$AVA uses the cute white-haired lolita image to build an organic community for the AI Agent product @HoloworldAI

•$MOVE uses various meme to promote @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 extravagant, the fakechain culture, etc.

Mercy: When screening Meme projects, what aspects do you consider?

Yuyue: I mainly consider three aspects:

The first is the narrative level, which is 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 capital structure. Large-cap projects need to pay attention to the dispersion of capital, which determines the strength of consensus; but early projects should not be overly dispersed, otherwise it is easy to generate sustained selling pressure.

The third is community building. It needs to have high-quality community leaders, preferably long-term built diamond hands, who can continuously recharge the faith of the community. If the early community is all flippers, it is difficult to establish long-term value.

3. Advice for Beginners

Mercy: What advice do you have for newcomers who have just entered the circle?

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, because you cannot completely replicate other people's 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 large 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 their own rhythm and circle. It's hard to go it alone, real growth requires learning from each other and making progress together in high-quality communities.

4. Impressions and Suggestions for OKX

Mercy (@Mercy_okx): Please share your impressions of OKX, including your experience with the products and your interactions with the team.

Yuyue (@yuyue_chris): The core impression OKX gives me is the fast product iteration speed. This is reflected in several aspects: First, the functionality of the CEX system, such as the UI overhaul of the finance section, which, although I wasn't too familiar with at first, has made the product logic clearer after the update. Secondly, the Web3 wallet section, which has iterated very quickly and become more and more comprehensive in functionality.

Another point is that OKX attaches great importance to user experience and needs, and the team is deeply involved in the community. You often appear in various groups to collect user feedback and can respond quickly, which has left me with a very good impression.

Mercy: Regarding the future development of OKX, 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 that 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 it has been done very well, with functions that are very close to 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 projects with strong immediacy, it would be better if they could be supported more quickly.

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 wallet's web version has a great experience on these chains, such as Aptos. It is suggested that this advantage can be further strengthened to 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 DEX, 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) offers or solicitations 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 fluctuate significantly. 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.