National Day Holiday Meme Coin Roller Coaster: A $600 Million Sentiment Capital Experiment

National Day holiday, A-shares are closed, and investors are crowded in scenic spots taking photos and checking in. Meanwhile, the crypto circle is experiencing an even crazier roller coaster.

In the ecosystem of a certain top-tier exchange, several Meme coins you’ve never heard of suddenly exploded—Meme4, PALU, and a coin called “Life”—their market caps multiplying dozens of times in just a few days. Early investors are easily showing over a million USD on their accounts, the Chinese-speaking community is boiling over, and Twitter influencers are excited as if they’ve discovered a new vein.

But the good times didn’t last long.

Starting October 9th, these coins, like a kite with its string cut, plummeted freely. Some coins fell 95% in a single day, over 100,000 traders were liquidated, and a total of $621 million evaporated. The dream of instant wealth turned overnight into a nightmare for the leek farmers.

I’ve seen this kind of drama on Wall Street; I’ve seen it in Lujiazui.

The shadow of GameStop

Think it’s crazy? Remember GameStop in 2021.

Reddit retail investors banded together to push the stock of a struggling game store to the moon, causing short-selling institutions to lose their minds. The SEC Chairman at the time called it a “milestone in behavioral finance”—no matter how absurd the prices, as long as trading is real and information transparent, it’s a legitimate part of the market.

American logic: bubbles should happen because they are the market’s evolution fuel.

If this Meme coin craze happened on Nasdaq, Wall Street would have already packaged a “Meme Stock ETF,” turning social hype into tradable investment factors. The Wall Street Journal would write long articles about “the victory of retail capitalism.” The SEC might study whether social media constitutes market manipulation, but most likely, they’d conclude: this isn’t fraud; it’s a natural reaction of group sentiment via algorithms and social transmission.

In China, the script is completely different.

If “Life Coin” appeared on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, regulators would immediately issue risk alerts, media would call for rationality, and the whole event would be branded as a “speculative anomaly,” becoming a vivid lesson in investor education. China’s market logic is “stability with progress”—hype is okay, but order must be maintained; innovation is welcome, but risks are borne by oneself.

Meme coins live in the third world

The magic of the crypto market is that it’s neither under SEC jurisdiction nor restrained by the CSRC. It’s a lawless zone—a gray financial laboratory organized by code, liquidity, and narratives.

Here, American-style social speculation (information diffusion + collective momentum) and Chinese grassroots wealth psychology (bottom-up resonance + community participation) magically fuse. Exchanges are no longer neutral platforms but “story factories”; KOLs are not just spectators but amplifiers of prices; retail investors hype themselves in cycles driven by algorithms and consensus, but also self-destruct.

The biggest change is: prices are no longer determined by cash flow but by the speed of story dissemination and the concentration of consensus.

We are witnessing the birth of “sentiment capital”—an asset with no financial reports, only cultural symbols; an investment with no fundamentals, only a consensus curve; a new capital form that doesn’t pursue rational returns but amplifies emotions.

When algorithms fail, emotions become currency

The data is cruel: in the first nine months of 2025, 90% of top Meme coins collapsed in market cap; in Q2, 65% of new tokens fell over 90% within six months. Like the gold rush of the digital age, most prospectors lost everything, only those selling shovels profited.

The core issue is: when money starts telling stories, the underlying logic of global finance is being rewritten.

In traditional markets, prices reflect value. In crypto markets, prices create value.

This is both the ultimate decentralization and possibly the limit of de-responsibilization. When narratives replace cash flow, and emotions become assets, each of us is a lab rat in this experiment.

Where is the exit?

The Web3 industry stands at a crossroads. Continue indulging in the short-term frenzy of “emotional capitalism,” or shift toward “value-driven ecosystems” for long-term development?

**The real way out: ** strengthen community governance, introduce more transparent regulatory frameworks, and establish investor education mechanisms. Only then can decentralized technology truly promote global financial fairness, rather than becoming tools for a few to harvest leeks.

Next time you see a big V shouting “100x coin,” ask yourself: Am I participating in financial innovation, or paying for others’ wealth freedom?

When money starts telling stories, what you need most isn’t FOMO (fear of missing out), but calm reflection.