With the Lunar New Year of the Horse approaching in 2026, major companies have launched their own Spring Festival marketing campaigns. Although Spring Festival campaigns are a "traditional skill" every year, this year the marketing efforts of various companies are basically centered around their own AI products.
For traditional giants like Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and Baidu, the 2026 Spring Festival marketing campaign is no longer simply about grabbing traffic, but a decisive battle for the "super gateway" to the future AI era. This year, these giants have invested a total of over 4.5 billion yuan in marketing expenses for AI products, a truly massive undertaking.
Recently, many people have been bombarded with news about Yuanbao red envelopes and free milk tea offers from Qianwen. Behind this "burning money for traffic" logic is that big companies hope to lower the threshold through red envelope subsidies, so that users will develop a muscle memory of "AI is useful to me", thereby completing the transformation from a tool to an ecosystem.
In the crypto space, although it can't compare to the billions of dollars in marketing budgets of internet giants, some large platforms or companies still launch Spring Festival marketing campaigns every year during the Lunar New Year.
Binance : "U Carnival" offers a $2 million prize pool, a Lunar New Year lucky draw, and a red envelope rain event, where everyone can participate in a lucky draw with real money prizes—simple and straightforward.
HTX : Launching the HTX Peak Tournament with a prize pool of 1.5 million, the Spring Festival Points Tournament, and the Spring Festival Coin Earning Interest Bonus Event.
Bitget launches the "Collect Nine Blessings for the New Year" event, where participants have the chance to share a prize pool of 100,000 USDT.
OKX's 10 million USDT Lunar New Year campaign this year is undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy cases in the industry. OKX's campaign design was quite complex, deeply integrating national social customs with the blockchain's native "hash algorithm".
Collect Five Blessings (Flagship Event) : For all users, collect blessing cards by completing tasks, and combine them to form the "God of Wealth Blessing" to share a prize pool of up to 28 BTC.
Users can obtain "Lucky Cards" by completing various tasks such as transactions, top-ups, and inviting friends. There are 5 different types of Lucky Cards in total, which can be combined into a "God of Wealth Lucky Card" after being collected. It is worth noting that the combined "God of Wealth Lucky Card" is not only a voucher for sharing 28 BTC, but also the core entry ticket to participate in the subsequent "Hash Lucky Draw", forming a closed loop of marketing logic.
OKX has a deep understanding of the social needs during the Spring Festival and has given Fu Cards high liquidity through the "Fu Card Transfer" feature. Users can build connections by requesting or actively gifting extra Fu Cards to friends. This not only adds a human element to the originally isolated on-chain operation but also greatly reduces the platform's customer acquisition costs through social sharing. During the Year of the Horse Spring Festival, these Fu Cards have become a digital bond connecting users and conveying warmth and companionship.
As the soul of the entire Spring Festival event, "Collecting Five Blessings" not only pays tribute to this national cultural symbol, but also gives it new vitality through the unique attributes of crypto assets.
Hash Lucky Draw (Bonus Prize) : Users holding "Fortune God's Blessing" will automatically participate and compete for an exclusive lucky draw prize of 1 BTC.
When people mention "lucky koi," the first thing that often comes to mind is Alipay's "Xin Xiaodai" in 2018, which caused a sensation across the internet. That was a lucky feast based on social media sharing and drawn by a centralized system. In 2026, OKX's "Hash Koi" completed a generational evolution in mechanism from "social luck" to "algorithmic justice."
Transparency in the lottery draw logic: Traditional lucky draws are often conducted in a "black box," requiring users to trust the platform's impartiality. OKX, however, uses the last 6 digits of the "first BTC block hash value" generated at the moment of the draw (February 21, 2026, 12:05 UTC+8) as the winning number.
The luck of consensus verification: Block hashes are generated through competition among global miners, making them unpredictable and publicly verifiable. This means that OKX entrusts the credibility of its lottery to the Bitcoin network. This sense of ritual, where "code is law," is more persuasive than any endorsement from a Web2 platform.
Guaranteed win: To avoid "empty prizes", OKX designed a hierarchical matching algorithm (e.g., if the 6th digit doesn't match, match the last 5 digits) to ensure that this lucky prize will definitely be delivered to the user.
Whether it's the AI-powered red envelopes from major internet companies or the multi-million dollar prize pools from crypto exchage, their core logic has long since transcended the simple realm of "user acquisition," and is more of a deep marathon about "access rights" and "trust consensus."
Just as traditional internet giants hoped to use red envelopes to get users used to "AI-powered services,"crypto exchage are also at a critical juncture in their transformation from "trading tools" to "Web3 portals." OKX, for example, subtly guides users to complete in-platform interactions through its extremely low-barrier-to-entry "collecting five blessings" activity.
The Spring Festival is the peak season for traffic and social interaction in the global Chinese-speaking community. At this time, OKX, by paying homage to traditional customs such as "collecting five blessings," has packaged cold crypto assets into heartwarming "New Year's red envelopes." This cultural leveraging transforms Web3 technology from a niche interest for geeks into a modern, accessible, and engaging tradition for everyone.
This "warmth" that persists during a market downturn is not only a careful protection of existing users, but also a concentrated reflection of the risk resistance capabilities and long-term values of a large platform.
For users, the sense of accomplishment from participating in the event may stem from the luck of being a "lucky koi," but the deep-seated sense of security comes from seeing that even in the so-called "winter," top platforms are still willing to stand with users, using hardcore technical means (such as hash verification) and genuine asset returns to dispel the gloom brought by volatility.
