The New Consensus of Young People: Labubu, CS Skins and Memes

"You might not believe it, but it's because I like Labubu that I became the sales champion of the store this month," said Jiani, a salesperson for a luxury handbag brand and a fervent enthusiast of trendy toys. She did not hide her sales secret: "Complimenting their bag is not as effective as praising the Labubu hanging on it; the customers will feel that you really understand them."

This is the sixth year of collaboration between Labubu and Pop Mart. As early as around 2020, it had already caused a stir in the Chinese market. However, what truly made this trendy toy explode internationally was a series of street photos starting last year, where BLACKPINK member Lisa began to hang it on top luxury bags like LV and Hermes.

As a result, more and more top celebrities have started to showcase their Labubu. Five years later, this IP has swept through the fashion circles of Southeast Asia and Europe and America, even making it to the cover of foreign fashion media: "Is LABUBU the most popular bag accessory of 2025?"

Global fashion icon Rihanna hung a pink Labubu on her Louis Vuitton tote bag as she exited the airport; pop music award winner and new generation international fashion darling Dua Lipa showcased two Labubus hanging from her orange handbag on IG, quickly trending; Lisa's name is well-known among Chinese youth, as this top K-pop group member frequently features a wall full of Labubu collections in her Instagram Story, making her the wild brand ambassador for Labubu.

For ordinary people, it's okay if they can't afford Hermes. With just under 200 yuan, you can get a celebrity's style Labubu and even participate in the social consensus of the top trendy circles.

If you are lucky enough to draw a hidden version with a probability of less than 1%, the price can multiply by more than ten times; even if you draw a regular version, hanging it on your bag, posting it in your friend circle, or showcasing it on Xiaohongshu can still bring emotional value and social validation.

"There are actually many tricks to buying different hidden models. Is the sound when shaking it rustling? Does it feel a bit harder when touched from the side? There are also subtle differences in weight," Jiani relies on her ability to identify hidden models, while everyone else is unable to buy or draw them, she is able to secure them for her clients.

In fact, this is not Labubu's first highlight moment. Around 2020, Labubu first experienced a breakout moment. The blind box culture quickly swept through Generation Z, satisfying personal expression while also triggering a game around "scarcity." The joy of drawing a hidden version is like hitting a jackpot. In the secondary market, some Labubu items have risen from hundreds to thousands of dollars, and unboxing videos featuring "drawing hidden versions" have become viral content on social media platforms.

In a sense, Labubu is no longer a toy, but rather a financial product that can be priced, speculated on, and circulated.

Coincidentally, around 2020, during the first wave of popularity for Labubu, another financial product with a trendy cultural IP was also exceptionally hot in a more virtual space - NFTs, which is likely very familiar to friends in the coin circle.

The climax of NFTs arrived at an auction on March 11, 2021, when the NFT artwork by the famous artist Beeple was sold at Christie’s auction, with the final price locked in at 69.34 million USD at the last second. This NFT artwork became the 53rd most expensive artwork in the world, and Beeple entered the top three in the ranking of living artists by the value of their works.

The internet has also provided a perfect assist for NFTs. It's no coincidence that the two largest social platforms on this planet, Tencent and Facebook, are simultaneously focusing on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR). They envision the future internet as the Metaverse, a world where the virtual and the real can seamlessly connect. The term NFT has been discussed multiple times in topics related to the Metaverse, and NFTs, which represent ownership, fit perfectly within the Metaverse.

In just a few months, the term "NFT" has landed all over the world.

The famous American rapper Soulja Boy, who has 5 million followers on social media, released his own NFT; Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA championship team Dallas Mavericks, issued an NFT; a dunk by superstar LeBron James was made into an NFT and sold for $250,000; top football clubs like Barcelona and AC Milan also have their own NFTs.

In that round of NFT frenzy, the most representative IP is undoubtedly BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club).

Launched by Yuga Labs, this avatar-type NFT project went live in the spring of 2021, initially priced at only 0.08 ETH (about $200), and sold out within 24 hours. It then quickly became popular as a social avatar on various platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

Jimmy Fallon showcased his ape on his talk show, calling it "the identity symbol of the next era"; Snoop Dogg and Eminem performed together at the MTV awards with BAYC imagery; Justin Bieber spent $1.3 million to purchase a rare ape; top stars like Curry and Neymar are promoting it; artists like Jay Chou and JJ Lin have also displayed their BAYC profiles; the traditional financial sector has also caught this wave: Cai Wensheng, chairman of Hong Kong-listed Meitu, and Zhu Xiaohu, partner at GSR Ventures, are both holders.

A small image can showcase identity tags and "social assets".

At the trading level, BAYC has pioneered the peak paradigm of NFT assetization: at its peak, a single piece sold for as much as 400,000 USD (approximately 150 ETH), with a floor price exceeding 100 ETH, and a cumulative trading volume across the network exceeding 1.5 billion USD.

NFTs and Pop Mart are actually doing the same thing: using a seemingly toy-like medium to stimulate the desire for participation, expression, and sense of identity within a particular circle.

Their process of "financial productization" is surprisingly similar: they all have significant avatar/image recognition; they all emphasize scarcity: rare editions, limited editions; they all tie in celebrity effects, triggering blockbuster phenomena; they all form a market structure from "original price entry" to "secondary speculation."

Labubu is the实体化 of NFT, and NFT is the more虚拟的 Labubu.

However, Wang Ning is only one person, and the NFT community is still not large enough. Since 2022, the fate of Labubu and NFTs has gradually diverged.

In the second year after BAYC reached its peak, the entire crypto market entered a downward cycle, and the myth of NFTs began to gradually cool down. As a former leader of NFTs, BAYC also became a leader in declines—the floor price dropped from 150 ETH to below 20 ETH, and now it is only 13 ETH, equivalent to one-tenth of its peak value. Holders are gradually "getting off the bus" with their avatars, and the once bustling community is slowly quieting down. The avatars, which were once the "business cards" for entering the crypto space, are now being joked about as the "on-chain ceiling stuck marker," all at least floating losses of $300,000.

However, Labubu's fire is burning hotter and hotter, firmly sitting at the top of the trendy toys ranking.

"The audience of Labubu surprisingly overlaps a lot with people who buy luxury bags." Jian Ni said, "Some customers originally just came to browse, but as soon as I see Labubu on their bag, the conversation flows and the sense of distance disappears. We can chat for a long time, ultimately making the customer happy to buy a bag."

However, Jiani revealed that there are indeed girls who are looking for a more suitable "carrier" for their beloved Labubu, and they step into a luxury store for the first time to buy their first designer bag. With the Labubu IP, Pop Mart, in its 15th year of establishment, has surprisingly begun to reverse influence the sales logic of luxury goods.

Even in the capital market, there has been a somewhat magical moment: the stock price of Pop Mart has skyrocketed, and its K-line in recent years looks almost identical to the 20-fold increase of Bitcoin in 2017, with its market value even surpassing that of the luxury goods giant Gucci's parent company at one point.

Looking back, the Hong Kong artist Long Jiasheng, who created the Labubu character just 10 years ago, probably could not have imagined that this somewhat "weird" and furry sprite would become the most profitable IP of Pop Mart, completely surpassing the veteran IP MOLLY, and becoming the undisputed center stage.

The Labubu collaboration originally priced at 599 yuan can now be traded in the secondary market for 14,000 yuan, an increase of over 20 times; the trendy shoes in collaboration with Vans have achieved transaction prices of 2000-3000 USD in overseas markets, rivaling limited edition Yeezys; specific limited series (such as "Big Into Energy" or the "Wings of Fortune" in collaboration with Pronounce) see prices soar due to radical designs and regional investment limits (such as exclusives in Thailand and Singapore).

We have witnessed a generation redefine "ownership" in two parallel universes.

In addition to "on-chain avatars" and "offline dolls", there is a more hidden, more enduring, and more actively traded "Consensus asset market" in the larger virtual space - game skins.

Although CSGO has been remade and renamed to CS2, it has existed for more than 10 years before this, so when discussing the skins of this game, people still tend to use the name CSGO out of habit.

Half a month ago, the CS item market experienced a "collapse". According to the SteamDT CS item sector index data, after about six months of a prolonged bull market, the CS item market fell 30% from its historical peak within a week, roughly equivalent to a "312" crash in the crypto world.

According to a report by Dexerto, by the end of April this year, the total market value of CS items exceeded $4.5 billion. According to data from the CS2 Case Tracker, in the first four months of 2025, over 113 million item cases were opened in the CS game. If we calculate based on each item case key costing $2.49, players contributed nearly $300 million in revenue to Valve (the company behind Steam and CS) just from opening CS items in the first four months of 2025.

Like Pop Mart, the CS accessory market has also taken ten years to enter the public eye.

"When CSGO was first launched, it did not introduce the in-game items and the item market mechanism. It can be said that skins saved this game." Cookie, who is both an NFT and a long-time CSGO player, said: "Although this sounds a bit like hindsight, the fact is that many people who don't play CS have learned about this game because of the surging prices of items. Therefore, this game, which began to gain popularity during the internet café era, has not collapsed and remains popular to this day."