OKX Friends Episode 6 | Conversation with Mai: A Hardcore Meme Mining Class, Practical Tips for Degen Players

Guest Message:
A process that every crypto investor must go through:

Seeing the mountain is a mountain

Seeing the mountain is not a mountain

Seeing the mountain is still a mountain

At first, when trading coins, one only focuses on narratives, paying special attention to smart money and whale wallets after analyzing their operations. Ultimately, when you understand all the rules of the game, you return to the first day, paying special attention to narratives, funding hotspots, and the consensus of investors.

This process must be realized by oneself; it is extremely painful but will eventually become clear. Keep it up!

Mr. Mai (@Michael_Liu93) is a seasoned investor who transitioned from traditional finance to Web3. After graduating in 2016, he worked for two years in an investment bank in Canada, engaging in mergers and acquisitions. After being exposed to blockchain from 2017 to 2018, he gradually shifted from a traditional VC perspective to cryptocurrency trading. Currently, he operates a fund focused on the Bitcoin secondary market and is also a well-known KOL in the meme coin sector. With deep market insights and high-quality content sharing, he has accumulated over 60,000 Twitter followers in just six months.

OKX has specially invited him as the first guest of the 2025 "Friends of OKX" series to share his deep thoughts on the meme sector and advice for newcomers. Through an analysis from both traditional finance and cryptocurrency perspectives, he presents a more three-dimensional market picture.

++The "++ ++Friends of OKX++ ++" series is a special column curated by++ ++OKX++ ++, hosted by++ ++Mercy++ ++ (++ ++@Mercy_okx++ ++), aimed at uncovering the stories, industry insights, and lessons learned from KOLs of different backgrounds for new users to learn from and reference.++

The Path from Traditional Finance to Web3

Mercyokx (@Mercyokx): Can you share your journey into Web3 with us?

Honest Mr. Mai (@Michael_Liu93): I entered the financial industry after graduating in 2016, first working in an investment bank in Canada for two years, and later in mergers and acquisitions. My initial exposure to blockchain was somewhat accidental. While researching the enterprise service sector, I participated in a conference call with the Credit Suisse research team, where they discussed blockchain technology. I had actually heard of Bitcoin during college, but I was quite skeptical about cryptocurrencies at that time. It wasn't until I encountered Ethereum and the application of blockchain in enterprise services from 2017 to 2018 that I began to take an interest in this field and started investing in some early public chain projects. However, I was still viewing blockchain from a traditional VC perspective until 2020-2021 when I officially transitioned to cryptocurrency, and now I mainly operate a Bitcoin secondary market fund.

Mercy_okx: What is the logic behind your transition from being a VC to focusing on meme coin trading?

Honest Mr. Mai: I am someone who likes to chase new opportunities; I go where there is a wealth creation effect. Currently, market opportunities are clearly in the secondary market, either buying Bitcoin to earn Beta returns or participating on-chain. However, I also went through a period of adaptation when I first entered on-chain trading. I found that many friends who messaged me reflected that on-chain trading was hard to grasp, and they lost money right away. In fact, I also lost money for the first six months, being "cut" by others every day. This is because even if there is stable profitability in the secondary market, entering on-chain requires re-education by the market. So I advise everyone to calmly accept this process, as it is a necessary tuition fee.

My previous VC experience is very helpful to me now. Essentially, they are both financial markets, and the human nature involved in market making and retail selling shares many common logics.

Deep Insights into the Meme Coin Market

Mercy_okx: How did you start building your personal IP? What do you think is the key factor that helped you grow from a few thousand to over 60,000 followers in a short time?

Honest Mr. Mai: I think I was quite lucky and managed to catch several waves of trends well. First of all, I realized early on that in the meme sector, personal IP and voice are very important. Because memes are essentially a game of dissemination, if you are a super disseminator or information center, you can get closer to other information centers. In all financial markets, information asymmetry is always the most valuable.

When I first started my account, I aimed to develop it in the meme direction. Initially, I mainly shared my expertise in the secondary market, such as how secondary market makers operate, including some retail investors chasing projects like TON's Dog and hamster. I analyzed the market-making and harvesting techniques behind these projects. This content resonated with many, and my account grew from a few hundred followers to several thousand.

Later, I began to write about my experiences in memes. Then Solana exploded rapidly, and I managed to catch that wave. Although I was a bit late to the game, as others had already been playing on Solana, I still seized some good opportunities, such as the early $ai16z and $ban, and now the AI concept, which I believe I also caught correctly. I am personally good at finding where the hot money is because my trading style is to follow the hot money.

Mercy_okx: How do you view the current development trend of the meme coin market? What changes has the rise of AI concepts brought?

Honest Mr. Mai: The current on-chain dividend is unstoppable; it is essentially absorbing liquidity from the secondary market. Why is liquidity on-chain being siphoned off by DEX? Behind this is actually a shift in business models.

Let me use a metaphor to explain: The original model was like this— I have an idea for making cars, first seeking VC funding, and then selling the cars to secondary market users on exchanges. The retail investors in the secondary market are essentially consumers who exchange USDT for project tokens. When market liquidity is good, if the project produces a "Porsche," the secondary market consumers might see appreciation. But when market liquidity is poor, and there are many car makers, if the initial pricing is very high, those who buy in the secondary market will become trapped consumers rather than investors.

Now the model has changed to— I have an idea, first raising funds from the market, and then gradually developing the product. Because retail investors have early participation opportunities, for example, they can invest when the project is only at the blueprint stage, and receive returns once the product is developed. This is essentially seizing the cake that VCs used to eat. Just like before, project parties had to go through rounds of financing: angel round, Series A, Series B; now it has become direct Fair Launch, where the quality of the product and market acceptance are directly reflected in the price.

The rise of AI concepts has brought significant changes, attracting a large influx of institutional funds. The valuations of ai16z and Swarms would not have reached this scale without institutional funding. Moreover, AI projects have changed the business model on-chain; they genuinely have products to showcase. Different types of investors enter at each stage— the earliest might be small investors thinking a $500,000 market cap is worth investing in, and later, as the team appears and the product takes shape, more institutional investors are attracted. This provides a clear buying logic at each stage, which is a model that institutional investors greatly favor.

Mercy_okx: Compared to traditional primary and secondary markets, what are the unique aspects of the meme coin market?

Honest Mr. Mai: The biggest characteristic is that "buying in often leads to zero." The gameplay of memes can be very diverse. In the secondary market, it is essentially a solo game of wits against the market makers. But meme coins are more like a MMORPG, where everyone shows their skills.

For example, as a small investor, you might be staring at the market every day to catch internal opportunities. If you are good at analyzing chips, you might catch early strong market makers. You can also be a builder; for instance, I recently advised a friend in the group who is not good at AI to talk to Hackathon teams to see who is preparing to issue tokens, to establish relationships in advance, as they might provide some early opportunities after they issue tokens and collect chips.

The key is to find a profitable angle that suits you. Just like in the secondary market, some people play spot trading, while others play contracts, and within spot trading, there are distinctions between swing trading and holding. Everyone needs to find the method that suits them best.

Mercy_okx: When evaluating the potential of a meme coin project, what do you think are the most important factors to consider?

Honest Mr. Mai: I think the arrival of the AI trend has significantly changed the evaluation logic for meme coins. In the previous meme era, project parties and market makers were hidden; if you didn't know the developers or primary market makers, it was hard to judge whether a project was a flow project, a strong market maker, or a conspiracy project. At that time, you could only analyze some clues from on-chain addresses, such as looking at how high a project party's previous projects could go.

With the AI wave, the evaluation has become closer to VC methodologies. Most of the teams are well-known, and you can conduct real due diligence— directly contacting community members and researching team backgrounds, all of which are written in their profiles.

When evaluating projects, I mainly look at three aspects:

1. Narrative potential: Does the product align with current market hotspots?
2. Team strength: Not only should their expertise in AI be considered, but also their operational capabilities in Web3, including market control, marketing, and community management.
3. Market space: For example, if a certain AI framework has reached a $2 billion valuation, and a new team with a strong technical background emerges in a similar direction, this presents a market replication opportunity.

This is actually very similar to the logic of traditional VC investing in early-stage projects. Just like ZhenFund is known for "investing in people," in the early stages of a project, there might not be much to look at besides the founder. But regardless of the stage of participation, the core is still to look at people, because how big a project can grow depends not only on the product itself but also on whether the team can create market sentiment, operate the project, and deliver continuously. Especially in the AI sector, we need to find teams that understand both the product and the Web3 gameplay; such projects are most likely to succeed.

Mercy_okx: There are many sub-sectors related to AI tokens, including computing power, infrastructure, pure memes, agent technology frameworks, launchpad platforms, etc. When evaluating different types of projects, how do you balance product logic, narrative, and market sentiment? Do different categories have different evaluation criteria?

Honest Mr. Mai: Let me illustrate with an example of a framework project. The so-called framework projects this round can be understood as counterparts to public chains, and various applications will be built on top of them, such as TradeFi or games. Why is the market so enthusiastic about $Virtual and $ai16z? Because they are building underlying frameworks, and the market gives them valuations similar to public chains.

In the AI application sector, we believe that besides frameworks, the most valuable direction is TradeFi + AI, for two reasons:

1. Liquidity entry point: In the cryptocurrency market, the most important thing is to find where the liquidity is. TradeFi is the easiest application sector to tap into liquidity; if you can earn a commission from trading, this product becomes very valuable.
2. User interaction frequency: In the cryptocurrency field, the most common activity for users is trading. Therefore, the AI applications with the highest interaction frequency are likely also in the TradeFi + AI direction.

Practice has also proven this point; for example, projects like Stoic and Berg saw their market caps rapidly rise from $2-3 million to tens of millions within two weeks. This is because the market replicates successful logic.

In contrast, those purely conceptual, storytelling, or meme projects, except for a few cases, do not have high market recognition. Because the AI sector has entered stage 4.0, it is no longer enough to simply launch a concept to raise funds; the market is more focused on product implementation and feasible business models.

As for infrastructure projects like $swarms achieving high valuations, it is because they are similar to public chains and can capture all trading liquidity within the ecosystem. This is also why the price of $Virtual should be higher than that of $ai16z, as it not only provides a technical framework but also taps into actual liquidity. In the future, $ai16z is likely to also move towards liquidity because, in Web3, the real moat is not just technology but also the possession of liquidity.

This differs from the AI competition in Web2. Web2 AI is more like an arms race, competing in financial strength and hardware reserves, while in Web3, liquidity has become an extremely critical factor.

Mercy_okx: What are the characteristics of the meme coin ecosystem on different public chains?

Honest Mr. Mai: There are distinct characteristics for both retail investors and project parties. First, Solana has a particularly fast pace; retail investors might lose everything overnight, and project parties might also find their tokens gone overnight. Maintaining a market cap of $5-10 million on Solana is very difficult without natural traffic; it offers very little margin for error for project parties.

BSC has a lot of rug pulls and startups, but if you encounter good developers and teams, the space can be quite large. However, due to the lack of natural traffic, you basically have to rely on your own efforts to drive the market, so projects that can succeed on BSC generally have strong financial backers.

Base is characterized by close ties between the official team and project parties, with significant support. For example, Jess (the head of the Base ecosystem) often helps project parties promote their projects. Additionally, there are many technical teams on Base working on some good products. For retail investors, one good aspect of Base is that the number of projects is relatively small, so the pressure of choice is less, and you can focus on projects that have official backing, which is relatively safer.

Newcomer Entry Guide

Mercy_okx: For newcomers entering the market, how do you suggest they reasonably allocate funds and build a sustainable investment system?

Honest Mr. Mai: The primary suggestion is not to buy VC coins in the secondary market. If you don't understand trading, I recommend allocating Bitcoin as a hoarder, and also appropriately allocating mainstream coins like Solana and Ethereum. If you want to trade memes, I suggest buying already validated blue-chip meme coins in the secondary market, such as Doge and Pepe.

Regarding fund allocation, I suggest that newcomers who want to participate in on-chain trading only use 10% of their total funds. For example, if you have $100,000, only use $10,000 for on-chain speculation, starting with one or two hundred dollars for each coin. Never go all in. The best approach is to start as an observer; once you can consistently generate profits in this market, gradually increase your capital scale.

Before finding a stable profit method, I advise against pursuing profits from internal trading. I have seen many friends frantically "bottom-fishing" in internal trading, but they often end up being harvested. I suggest starting to observe projects with a market cap of $5-10 million, with each investment being 0.05-0.1 ETH for experimentation. Once you find that you are generally making money in memes, then expand your position. This is not a gambling game; if you treat it as gambling, you will definitely lose badly.

Mercy_okx: How do you build channels for information acquisition?

Honest Mr. Mai: The most important thing is not to follow matrix accounts. Instead, focus on a few major KOLs in the industry who are trustworthy. Pay special attention to the KOL's first recommendations (calls), rather than subsequent ones, because the market changes too quickly, and the odds of later calls may be different.

Additionally, find a group of trusted, complementary partners to exchange ideas with. In this market, teamwork often leads to greater success than going solo. Everyone may have their own strengths, and mutual support can help you go further.

Suggestions and Outlook for OKX

Mercy_okx: What is your overall impression of OKX?

Honest Mr. Mai: The OKX team is very forward-thinking, and their interaction with the community is very close. This includes product teams and colleagues in KOL operations, who are very in touch with the market. They have also done well in on-chain tools and wallets, providing free services from the start, which shows good strategic vision. They have responded quickly to the transformation of this on-chain market trend, and among all exchanges, they have a far-sighted view. I cannot yet assess the speed of their response to issues, as I have not encountered relevant situations. However, overall, OKX has a very serious attitude towards serving users.

This article is for reference only. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the position of OKX. This article does not intend to provide (i) investment advice or 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 you based on your financial situation. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals regarding your specific circumstances. You are responsible for understanding and complying with applicable local laws and regulations.