Authors: Jaleel, Cookie

"You might not believe it, but because I like Labubu, I became the sales champion of the store this month," said Jiani, a sales representative for a luxury handbag brand and a fervent enthusiast of trendy toys. In an interview with Rhythm BlockBeats, she openly shared her sales secret:

"Praising their bag is not as effective as complimenting the Labubu hanging on it; the customer will feel that you really understand them."

This marks the sixth year of Labubu's collaboration with Pop Mart. As early as around 2020, it had already stirred up a wave in the Chinese market. However, what truly propelled this trendy toy to international fame was a series of street photos featuring BLACKPINK member Lisa, who began hanging it on top luxury bags like LV and Hermes last year.

Foreign fashion media: Is LABUBU the most popular bag accessory of 2025?

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

Global fashion icon Rihanna was spotted with a pink Labubu hanging from her Louis Vuitton tote at the airport; music award magnet and new generation international fashion darling Dua Lipa showcased two Labubu on her orange handbag on Instagram, becoming a trending topic; Lisa's name is well-known among young people in China, and her Instagram Story often features a wall full of Labubu collections, making her a wild brand ambassador for Labubu.

For ordinary people, not being able to afford Hermes is not a problem. A Labubu priced under 200 yuan can provide a celebrity-like experience and even allow participation in the top trendy circles' social consensus.

If you're lucky enough to draw a hidden version with less than a 1% chance, the price can soar tenfold or more; even if you draw a regular version, hanging it on your bag, posting it on social media, or sharing it on Xiaohongshu can still yield emotional value and social validation.

"There are many tricks to buying different hidden versions; the sound when shaking it should be a rustling sound, it should feel a bit harder when touched from the side, and there are subtle differences in weight," Jiani relies on her ability to identify hidden versions, managing to get them for her clients when others can't.

From left to right: Thai actress Hargate, Blackpink member Rose, Singapore billionaire Peter Lim's heir Kim Lim

Labubu "male waist, female bag hanging," has become a new trend in the fashion circle

In fact, this is not Labubu's first moment in the spotlight. Around 2020, Labubu experienced its first breakout moment. The blind box culture quickly swept through Generation Z, satisfying individual expression while triggering a game around "scarcity." The joy of drawing a hidden version is akin to winning a lottery. In the secondary market, some Labubu items skyrocketed from hundreds to thousands of yuan, and unboxing videos of "drawing hidden versions" became a phenomenon on social media.

In a sense, Labubu is no longer just a toy; it has become a financial product that can be priced, speculated upon, and circulated.

Interestingly, around the same time in 2020, when Labubu was first gaining popularity, another trendy cultural IP financial product was also exceptionally hot in a more virtual space—NFTs, which might be familiar to friends in the crypto circle.

The climax of NFTs arrived during an auction on March 11, 2021, when renowned artist Beeple's NFT artwork was sold at Christie's auction for a staggering $69.34 million. This NFT became the 53rd most expensive artwork in the world, and Beeple entered the top three in terms of artwork value among living artists.

Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" sold for over $69 million. This artwork appears to be a colorful pixel collage but is actually composed of 5,000 individual images, created daily by Beeple over more than 13 years.

The internet also provided a perfect boost for NFTs. The two largest social platforms on the planet, Tencent and Facebook, simultaneously focused on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR), envisioning the future internet as the Metaverse—a world where the virtual and real can seamlessly connect. The term NFT has been frequently discussed in relation to the Metaverse, representing ownership perfectly suited for it.

In just a few months, the term "NFT" landed worldwide.

American rapper Soulja Boy, with 5 million followers on Twitter, released his own NFT; Mark Cuban, owner of NBA champion team Dallas Mavericks, issued NFTs; a dunk by superstar LeBron James was turned into an NFT and sold for $250,000; top football clubs like Barcelona and AC Milan also launched their own NFTs.

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

Launched by Yuga Labs, this avatar 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 quickly became popular as a social avatar across 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 acquire a rare ape; top stars like Curry and Neymar promoted it; artists like Jay Chou and JJ Lin also showcased BAYC avatars; even traditional finance circles caught this trend: Meituan Group chairman Cai Wensheng and venture capitalist Zhu Xiaohu are both holders.

A small image can signify identity labels and "social assets."

In trading terms, BAYC has pioneered the pinnacle paradigm of NFT assetization: at its peak, a single ape sold for as much as $400,000 (about 150 ETH), with floor prices exceeding 100 ETH, and total trading volume across the network surpassing $1.5 billion.

NFTs and Pop Mart are essentially doing the same thing: using a seemingly toy-like medium to stimulate participation, expression, and a sense of belonging within a certain circle.

Their process of "financial productization" is remarkably similar: both have significant avatar/image recognition; both emphasize scarcity: rare and limited editions; both are tied to celebrity effects, triggering viral phenomena; both have formed a market structure from "original price entry" to "secondary speculation."

Labubu is a tangible NFT, while NFTs are a more virtual Labubu.

However, there is only one Wang Ning, and the NFT circle is still not mainstream enough. Starting in 2022, the fates of Labubu and NFTs began to diverge.

In the second year of BAYC's peak, the overall crypto market entered a downward cycle, and the NFT myth gradually cooled. BAYC, once a leader in the NFT space, became a laggard—its floor price dropped from 150 ETH to below 20 ETH, now only 13 ETH, equivalent to one-tenth of its peak value. Holders gradually "dropped their avatars," and the once bustling community became quiet. What used to be the "entry card" in the crypto circle is now mocked as a "sign of being trapped on the chain," with losses of at least $300,000.

Meanwhile, Labubu's popularity continues to soar, firmly holding the top spot in trendy toys.

"The audience for Labubu overlaps surprisingly well with those who buy luxury bags," Jiani said. "Some customers were just browsing, but once I see the Labubu on their bag, the conversation flows easily, and we can chat for a long time, ultimately making them happy to buy a bag."

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

Even in the capital market, a somewhat magical moment has emerged: Pop Mart's stock price has soared, with its K-line chart resembling the 20-fold growth of Bitcoin in 2017, and its market value even briefly surpassed that of luxury giant Gucci's parent company.

Looking back, the Hong Kong artist Long Jiasheng, who created the Labubu character ten years ago, might find it hard to imagine that this somewhat "quirky" and furry sprite has now naturally become Pop Mart's most profitable IP, completely surpassing the veteran IP MOLLY, becoming the undisputed center of attention.

The original price of the Labubu collaboration model was 599 yuan, but it can now be traded in the secondary market for 14,000 yuan, a more than 20-fold increase; the trendy shoes in collaboration with Vans have transaction prices in overseas markets reaching $2,000 to $3,000, rivaling limited edition Yeezys; specific limited series (like "Big Into Energy" or the "Wings of Fortune" collaboration with Pronounce) have seen prices soar due to radical designs and regional limitations (like Thailand and Singapore exclusives).

We are witnessing the same generation redefining "ownership" in two parallel universes.

Beyond "on-chain avatars" and "offline dolls," in a larger virtual space, there exists a more hidden, enduring, and actively traded "consensus asset market"—game skins.

Although CSGO has been remade and renamed CS2, prior to that, CSGO had already existed for over ten years, so when discussing the skins from this game, people still tend to casually refer to it as CSGO.

Half a month ago, the CS skin market experienced a "crash." According to SteamDT's CS skin index data, after a prolonged bull market of about six months, the CS skin market dropped 30% within a week from its historical peak, akin to a "312" crash in the crypto circle.

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

Like Pop Mart, the CS skin market took ten years to enter the public eye.

"When CSGO was first launched, there was no mechanism for in-game items and skin markets; you could say skins saved this game," Cookie, an old player of both NFT and CSGO, said. "While this may sound like hindsight, many people who don't play CS have come to know this game because of the skyrocketing prices of skins, so this game, which started gaining popularity in internet cafes, has not collapsed and remains popular."

In August 2013, CSGO first introduced the skin mechanism, and the Steam market supported the trading of CS skins. During the subsequent NFT boom, the CS skin market also gained attention and popularity due to its similarities with NFTs. However, looking back at the design of the skin mechanism at that time, one must admire Valve as a pioneer in rarity design.

CS skins have rarity levels, as well as randomness in wear and pattern templates, leading to some skins selling for the highest prices in the market, even if their acquisition probabilities are not the highest rarity levels.

"Wear does not mean that the player's skin wears down with use in the game, but rather the integrity or glossiness of the skin item," Cookie explained.

The difference between high and low wear on the same weapon skin

Pattern templates can be simply understood as a gun sometimes not displaying a complete "picture." Because the coverage area of the skin is limited, which part of the "picture" is displayed on the weapon can make a world of difference.

In comparison to NFTs, a similar example is Dmitri Cherniak's generative art project Ringers, which produced Ringers #879, an image resembling a goose, and was sold for 1,800 ETH (about $5.6 million) to 3AC, making it one of the most expensive generative art pieces on the market at that time.

This AK-47 has a surface quenching; although both are "brand new factory" level wear, the one on the left has an ordinary pattern template, showing a sparse and uneven distribution of blue on the weapon. The one on the right, however, has the top-tier #661 pattern template, with a large and concentrated distribution of blue at the muzzle and top of the gun. Therefore, the left one is priced around 2,500 RMB on the BUFF market, while the latter is in the millions, even though the AK-47 surface quenching is not the highest rarity level skin.

Moreover, the sticker system and esports events in CS also give skins additional narrative value. In 2014, the sticker item mechanism was launched in CS. This mechanism seemed simple, allowing players to apply stickers to weapon skins, evolving from being overlooked to becoming another important pillar category in CS items. Team dissolutions and player retirements can cause related stickers to skyrocket in value.

Stickers from teams like Titan and iBUYPOWER launched during the Katowice 2014 Major event (the Major event is the top-tier event in the CS esports system, and official stickers are released for teams and players who successfully advance to the Major) later skyrocketed in price due to their limited availability and excellent aesthetics.

The first wave of development in the CS skin market is somewhat similar to Bitcoin, both taking root in "gray areas." Bitcoin thrived on the dark web, while CS skins flourished on virtual gambling sites.

Before 2016, many skins were used as gambling chips to bet on esports match outcomes on platforms like CSGOLounge, even participating in roulette. This quickly drove up skin prices and attracted minors and frequent match-fixing, prompting official intervention to regulate the situation, issuing cease-and-desist letters to several skin gambling sites, including CSGOLounge, demanding they stop unauthorized gambling activities using the Steam API.

The CS skin market briefly cooled down but did not completely retreat; the symbolic significance of high-end skins as a status symbol among players has become deeply ingrained.

Just as Labubu enthusiast Jiani enjoys watching "trendy toy unboxing videos, especially when hidden versions are drawn," owning a dream knife in CS is the pursuit of every long-time viewer of matches and players, spawning a plethora of CS unboxing videos and live streams, experiencing the thrill of turning a bicycle into a motorcycle.

"The most typical example is CS streamer Qiezi, who rose to fame around 2018 and boosted the popularity of CSGO in China," Cookie recalled. Meanwhile, NetEase's CS skin trading platform BUFF was launched, and the cooperation between third-party skin trading platforms and Steam entered a stable phase. Some third-party trading platforms that allow fiat currency settlements have facilitated the emergence of systematic arbitrage mechanisms like stockpiling and flipping, further clarifying the financial characteristics of CS skins.

During the pandemic, Steam's user count reached an all-time high, with players flooding in and unboxing volumes skyrocketing. Coupled with the rise of the NFT concept, the label "off-chain NFT" has transformed CS skins from in-game items into members of the "digital collectibles" ecosystem—possessing independent pricing systems and scarcity consensus.

"At this stage, CS skins also have 'opinion leaders,' and the independent pricing system is basically complete. There are established norms for how much a gun's wear level and template are worth. On Bilibili, there are already many CS skin shopping guide videos, and new content is constantly being produced," Cookie said.

It can also be seen that the CS skin market shares many similarities with the NFT space in the crypto circle: random minting, rarity creating value and liquidity differentiation. Rare items are expensive but hard to sell, while floor items are cheap but easy to move. Even in the CS skin market, there are original skins like the claw knife and butterfly knife, which serve as price indicators similar to Bitcoin's market status.

"However, since CS is genuinely an excellent game, unmatched in the FPS genre, the liquidity in the CS skin market is significantly better than that of NFTs," Cookie added. "Rather than saying that these things young people like have developed speculative attributes that shouldn't exist, I prefer to say that this is a collective consciousness among young people, granting them unique asset pricing power."

Such examples appear in CS skins, NFTs, and continuously across various groups.

Take sneakers, for instance. Over the past decade, Nike and Adidas may not have designed any technical innovations, but they have turned "sneakers" into financial products: a pair of AJ1 "Chicago" originally priced at 1,299 yuan can now be traded for 4,000 yuan on platforms like Dewu; Yeezys have skyrocketed in price after being discontinued; collaborations with Solomon and Asics, once belonging to the running community, have now become new favorites for sneaker flippers.

Now consider bags. From the beloved Porter collaborations and Jacquemus mini bags for women to the Supreme toolbox and LV Yayoi Kusama collaborations for men, each could potentially be a bargaining chip for resale on platforms like Xianyu.

In the hierarchy of the trendy circle, whoever carries a limited edition bag seems to have an extra rare NFT in their wallet address.

Flipping sneakers, bags, and NFTs seems to have a "middle-class attribute," but what about cigarette cards?

Don't laugh; cigarette cards have become a spiritual totem for kids born after 2010 on Xiaohongshu and Douyin.

Behind this is a wave of "card collecting" among elementary school students. From the initial Ultraman cards to the gradually popular My Little Pony cards in 2023, and this year's Nezha series cards, with prices ranging from 2 yuan to 10 yuan, the profit margin for the company behind the cards is as high as 71%, earning more than Pop Mart in 2024.

Even during their A-round financing, the card company boldly signed a bet agreement with investors (Sequoia and Tencent), stipulating that the company must go public before the fifth anniversary of the preferred stock issuance date (i.e., 2026), or it would trigger a buyback, with an annualized buyback interest rate of 8%.

Main forms of card company cards

You might think young people are wasting money, but they are actually establishing a new pricing model: emotions, community, culture, aesthetics, discourse power, and traffic can all be priced.

Everything can be flipped; it's just that each generation has its own "heavenly beads."

In the theory of "value investing," MEME coins and dog coins have always been marginalized, even in the bubble-filled crypto circle. But seeing this, I think many who previously couldn't understand dog coins and meme coins in the crypto circle should now understand why young people are keen on flipping coins.

They are more like participating in a decentralized youth culture investment—only the targets are not a company or project, but a joke, an image, or even a phrase.

PEPE, initially just a character in an online comic by cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005, later evolved into a widely recognized MEME symbol on the internet, gathering a community of countless anonymous artists who created various Pepe images, playing diverse roles in different cultural contexts and social media platforms.

This PEPE meme coin quietly launched in the spring of 2023. There was no white paper, no team introduction, and not even a practical scenario—just an image. Yet, within three days of its launch, the price surged by 7,000%, and its market value exceeded $1 billion. Even BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes called himself a "frog believer," with PEPE becoming a hallmark of the new generation of meme coins.

In fact, all crypto tokens have meme attributes, just varying in intensity, including Bitcoin.

As the first successful cryptocurrency, Bitcoin's philosophical meaning, its anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, and its spirit of opposing traditional financial systems endow it with significance beyond technology.

So from this perspective, Bitcoin itself is the earliest MEME, representing the pursuit of power, freedom, and systemic change. This symbolic meaning transcends its function as currency, becoming a marker of a cultural and social movement. Later on, there emerged various meme trends that you can hardly name all.

At the peak of this movement, former President Trump issued a personal meme coin, and young people from China made unimaginable profits in just two days. A post-95 youth, code-named "0xSun," became the champion of this 48-hour movement with tens of millions of dollars in profits.

Today's meme coins seem to fill the gaps in the traditional crypto circle, pursuing global hot topics more fervently. Thai internet celebrity hippos, squirrels killed by the Democratic Party, and suddenly viral memes on TikTok all have their own meme coins.

Behind every meme coin, young capital is using real money to chase the most trending topics. Of course, Labubu is no exception.

This phenomenal IP has also seen a meme coin launched on-chain by the community, skyrocketing a hundredfold in a month, with returns surpassing any financial product related to Pop Mart.

The gameplay of meme coins is almost identical to that of CS skins, NFTs, and trendy toys: initial low prices + random wealth, igniting collective FOMO; strong visual memory points (Shiba Inu, frogs, anime avatars); community-driven, relying on word-of-mouth rather than official announcements; emotion-driven, emphasizing "consensus over value."

You will find that this generation of young people may be doing the same thing with different media: in an era of information explosion, blurred identities, and thin senses of the future, they use an irrational passion to construct their own "pricing rules."

Remember Yuval Noah Harari once said in "Sapiens" that Homo sapiens initially communicated interpersonal information through "gossip," establishing stable and close interpersonal organizations by evaluating others. Later, people formed shared imaginations through "storytelling" to build broader trust, such as in religion, nations, currencies, companies, etc. On this basis, adding some scarcity and limited editions makes the narrative top-notch.

So whether it's Labubu, NFTs, meme coins, or CS skins, anything that can form a strong group identity is something this generation of young people is eager to speculate on.

After finishing this article, the editor, who is full of meme coins, also bought their first Labubu and sent it to eight friends…