"The face of the 'mainstream' once appeared so clear that it was almost stereotypical: founders from investment banks, dressed in suits and speaking restrainedly; incubator-certified projects having standardized financing paths and growth curves; before going public, the capital structure was already arranged, who enters, who exits, who makes the market, all written on a single sheet of paper.
"The mainstream has its own narrative style, stable, replicable, and trustworthy. The mainstream also has its operational logic, selecting qualified candidates from within the system and then determining how much they are worth and how far they can go."
"The 'mainstream' system has indeed started to loosen in recent years. Many niche cultures have begun to seep in, and the once-solid boundaries have become less certain."
You can see graffiti entering art galleries, punk taking to fashion weeks, and hip-hop becoming a big winner at the Grammys. Once regarded as a 'tool for crime', Bitcoin has also transformed into a key topic in Federal Reserve research reports and is included in BlackRock's asset allocation table.
Niche culture is invading the mainstream system, but its approach is not to become more 'formal', but to compel the mainstream world to acknowledge that it has a stronger grassroots foundation and cultural influence.
In this process, the original authority becomes less effective, and the standards are no longer singular. Those things that were once marginalized begin to have their own space to speak. The capital market also has to accept a new logic: being from a legitimate background does not necessarily make one more reliable, and not being endorsed by an organization does not guarantee failure.
In recent years, those projects that become popular are increasingly not those that follow a step-by-step approach, but rather a group of initially underestimated 'atypical' projects: GameStop, which rose from memes, and AMC, which rewrote narratives through retail communities; Pinduoduo and Temu, which penetrate user communities through extreme product linkages.
The reason niche can break through is not because it is stronger than the mainstream, but because it is closer to 'people'. It is not planned from the top down but grows naturally from the bottom up. It often carries a rough aesthetic, it can be seen, liked, and trusted.
The advance of Bitcoin, the sense of belief of the foreigners
Bitcoin has always been a foreigner in the 'mainstream' system.
The so-called foreigners do not speak the mainstream language, have not accepted mainstream discipline, and do not follow the mainstream rhythm. In real society, 'foreigners' are often hard to hear. Their intentions are easily misunderstood; their methods are seen as threats; their challenges to the existing order are labeled as 'dangerous' or 'barbaric'.
Bitcoin is just like that. It challenges the central node technically, sovereign currency in asset form, and authority systems culturally. It is not a financial asset created by financial elites but a victory of niche culture, the most aggressive collective belief of the internet age.
In its first decade, Bitcoin's early stages circulated among geek communities, cryptography forums, survivalists, and anarchists, like a currency system in a parallel world that was not taken seriously by the mainstream.
Bitcoin first genuinely entered the public's view during the bull market of 2017. At that time, its explosive growth attracted global attention and also triggered regulatory anxiety. But that was just heat, not real recognition.
Until after the pandemic in 2020, global monetary easing led to a trust crisis in traditional finance, with rising U.S. stocks, depreciating dollars, and bank runs... Bitcoin re-entered the mainstream view, and this time, it was no longer just a speculative asset.
That was the first time Bitcoin was widely seen as a tool against inflation and became a way for ordinary people to protect their assets. During that time, it flowed from the geek community into the larger public market, gradually evolving into a symbol of retail investors against institutions, becoming the core symbol of 'anti-authority narrative'.
At that time, Bitcoin was like a flag—not a product, but an attitude.
Today, Bitcoin has entered its third phase: accepted by the mainstream but still a 'foreigner'.
It appears in ETF products, is written into asset allocation reports, and is publicly discussed by presidents, central banks, and hedge funds. But it has never truly changed itself, without regulatory dominance, organizational representation, or individual control.
The mainstream market has accepted its price, accepted its liquidity, and made it part of passive income, but it has not accepted its spirit, and it is no longer asked what it really represents. It has been accepted, but it does not belong, and it does not need to belong.
So we say that Bitcoin is the most successful advance of niche culture in the capital market. It is not because it has received permission, but because it has never sought permission, and has reached today's position.
DDC, another direction for niche cultural breakthrough
Norma Chu does not fit the 'entrepreneurial archetype' defined by the mainstream. She embodies too many marginal labels: female, Asian, content-based, non-technical background...
In 2012, Norma Chu returned to Hong Kong from the United States and discovered that there was not a single Chinese cooking platform truly aimed at young people on the Internet. Her first job was as a stock analyst at UBS, and she could have chosen to continue climbing the clear career ladder in the financial industry. But she did not; she turned to the kitchen, began writing recipes, taking photos, and editing videos, not to ride the traffic dividend but out of the most straightforward motivation: "I love cooking and love eating, I love cooking."
And because of this, DayDayCook (abbreviated as DDC) has not followed the standard consumer goods route from the beginning. It is neither a business model that derives brand positioning from the supply chain nor a flow-based project preferred by capital, but rather a community trust accumulated little by little through content, interaction, and time.
Initially, she just wanted to show the act of cooking to more people, never imagining she would progress to where she is today. But starting with one piece of food content after another, she gradually accumulated the brand's embryonic form and established her product system in the process of e-commerce. Later, she sold her products to North America, established a foothold in the U.S. market, and ultimately led the company to go public.
Norma recalled that during the early days of entrepreneurship, she said: "Back then, it was very difficult to raise funds and hire people while starting a business in Hong Kong; entering the mainland also faced a high learning curve." She does not believe she is the type to draw a complete blueprint from the beginning, but she always has a bottom line: put 'people' first, think clearly about users before considering channels; solidify the content before discussing budget allocation; strategy is always to serve the narrative, not the other way around.
This slow pace was not favored in the early capital market. It is not fast enough, not sexy enough, and has no obvious explosion point. But Norma has proven one thing over more than a decade: a community built on content and companionship can also become a brand that survives.
She said: "At the beginning, we didn’t even calculate GMV; I was more concerned about whether this user stayed because they liked us."
It sounds a bit sentimental, but DDC has developed to this point precisely because of this sentimentality. It does not attract consumers by telling stories, but by accompanying users, turning content into a repeatable relationship, creating a sustainable content-consumption closed loop.
So when she bought Bitcoin for the first time in 2021, it was not surprising; it could even be said to be a natural progression. At that time, she was already a senior entrepreneur with ten years of experience in community content, facing Generation Z users, creating empathetic content—these are precisely the foundational colors of Bitcoin's earliest narratives.
That year, Hong Kong was becoming a transition place for Bitcoin funding and talent. Her circle of friends began frequently mentioning ETFs, Coinbase, and the stories of MicroStrategy. An early investor advised her to seriously study Bitcoin strategic reserves and introduced her to MicroStrategy's growth path. After reviewing the materials and reading Michael Saylor's book, she began to reassess the company's financial structure.
She said that the reason she began to seriously think about this matter at that time was not due to being attracted by hype, but by structure. "If I did not have a background in stock analysis and did not have the experience of personal investment in 2021, I might not have taken that advice seriously at all."
But she not only listened but also decided to execute.
At the beginning of this year, Norma formally proposed a transformation strategy to the board—integrating Bitcoin into the company's balance sheet and using DDC's operating cash flow to long-term reserve BTC. By May this year, they completed the acquisition of the first batch of 100 Bitcoins and quickly finished a round of financing, making DDC the world's first Bitcoin strategic reserve company promoted by a female founder.
She did not treat this as some kind of labeled 'female entrepreneurial breakthrough'. She simply downplayed it when asked, saying: "Sure it's cool, I’m the first. But more importantly, is this decision the most beneficial for shareholders?"
This is not a pretty statement or a story packaging tactic, but a judgment method she has long established. The reason she made this transformation is not because the idea of Bitcoin reserves has become popular, but because she has spent ten years understanding users, building trust, and continuing the narrative—precisely what lies at the core of Bitcoin's existence.
Her understanding of Bitcoin does not start from a technical white paper. It does not begin with speculation, wealth, or anonymity. Her path to understanding begins with 'trust': why would someone be willing to believe in something that is unseen and intangible? This is actually the question she has been dealing with for the past ten years—in content, in branding, in community.
DDC's users are not transient visitors who leave after browsing, but those willing to stop and click on a cooking video. What Norma creates is not viral content but an emotional expression. She tells stories in the first person and uses a sense of companionship to bridge the distance, slowly establishing a trust relationship unique to DDC. "Many people think we are a content e-commerce platform, but we have always been managing emotional trust," she said.
This heightened sensitivity to 'trust' has also become her starting point for understanding Bitcoin.
Before transforming into a Bitcoin strategic reserve, Norma began to reassess the company’s marketing approach. She said that in the past, advertising and discounts were for attracting traffic, but this method is increasingly ineffective in truly retaining users. Later, she began to think about whether part of the budget could be used for user incentives in a Web3 way. "Web3 is a new approach that allows users to be rewarded in the process," she said.
She faces Generation Z users who are accustomed to scrolling through one-minute cooking videos on TikTok and leaving comments on Instagram about their replicated dishes. They trust brands but care more about whether the person behind the brand is sincere. Their consumption decisions are not always rational but often stem from emotional recognition or value expression.
"We are creating a Bitcoin reward system," Norma said, "You can earn BTC rewards by buying products or participating in social media interactions."
But she emphasized that this is not a simple replica of a membership system, but a new structural attempt. She wants to turn Bitcoin from a trading symbol into a part of the user's long-term experience.
This is her understanding of Bitcoin—not just 'digital gold', but a certificate of time and trust. What Norma values is not the price of Bitcoin, but its 'Staying Power'. This term is what she likes to use to describe Bitcoin, and it is also what she hopes DDC will become.
She said: "Bitcoin has gone through so many suppressions and doubts, but it is still here." She hopes DDC will be that kind of company—able to endure cycles, survive turmoil, and even become stronger.
She wrote Bitcoin into the company's underlying structure
Bitcoin strategic reserves are not just an asset allocation. For DDC, it is more like an attempt to fundamentally change the company's way of thinking.
Norma is well aware that the biggest challenge of strategic reserves is not buying coins, but continuously buying; not financing, but turning financing into a positive flywheel. She transplanted the sense of rhythm she learned from content over the past decade directly into the Bitcoin allocation rhythm.
"I told the team that buying Bitcoin is not just an action, but a complete set of mechanisms." She didn’t just throw money into it; she set up a comprehensive execution plan: buying in batches at a rhythm through financing tools like ATMs, seeking strategic investors who truly look at the long term, and starting to build communication channels in the crypto community.
Unlike MicroStrategy, DDC does not have large cash reserves on its balance sheet. Norma's strategy is more restrained; she gradually holds Bitcoin through real business cash flow, buying in little by little.
"We are essentially still a food-selling company; we just choose to invest part of the profits into long-term value," she said.
This approach sounds conservative, but in the crypto market, it is a very rare path.
Norma is very clear that when the capital market observes a Bitcoin strategic reserve company, it looks at several core issues: first, whether the company can generate profits sustainably; second, whether it has the ability not to sell coins when a bear market arrives; third, whether the management has a stable narrative vision and execution capability.
The answer she provides is DDC's three 'atypical' advantages:
The first difference is in funding foundations. Norma has years of accumulation in both Chinese and American capital markets, enabling her to continuously increase positions through OTC, convertible bonds, and private agreements, without relying on the public market. "We are also in talks with some family offices that have held coins for many years."
The second difference lies in the narrative advancement path. She chose to collaborate with Bitcoin OGs in the community to establish the 'Influence Collective', where each member represents a community, a narrative channel.
The third difference is in asset structure. DDC does not have a financial black hole of burning cash, nor is it a shell company supported by hype to sustain its valuation. Its food business still maintains an annual growth of 30-40%. In other words, it is a BTC strategic reserve company with 'fundamentals', capable of narrating in a bull market and competing for cash flow in a bear market.
This balance is the sense of rhythm she has cultivated over the past decade.
Norma said that if it weren't for the patience developed in early content creation, the resonance community established with Generation Z users, and the organizational rhythm gained over time, DDC might have never understood Bitcoin, let alone write it into its balance sheet.
The foreigner stands in the center of the stage
Norma has never defined herself as a 'Crypto person'. But those seemingly 'non-mainstream' labels she carries unexpectedly resonate with the spiritual core of Bitcoin.
She is not anxious about the Bitcoin narrative being dominated by Europe and America, nor is she worried about the absence of Asian capital from the main stage.
Her confidence also comes from structural changes in the real world. She sees regulatory loosening, capital shifts, and rewriting of funding structures, and she also sees Generation Z understanding value in a completely different way. "Stablecoins have educated the market, and Crypto is truly being understood." She said that investors who couldn't comprehend BTC a month ago are now discussing premium structure and coin-based asset allocation.
Norma is not the type to loudly proclaim a 'decentralization revolution', but she is participating in this global wealth reconstruction through a highly realistic path. And she herself has also undergone a self-reconstruction of identity in this process.
In the past decade, she has transformed from a content entrepreneur into the CEO of a listed company and has become the world's first female founder to promote Bitcoin as a strategic reserve. She was once marginalized, but now, because of being 'non-mainstream', she has become a starting point for a new narrative.
"Existence is difference; difference is advantage," she said. She knows her way of expression differs from many managers, and her pace is slower, but this 'slowness', in a rapidly changing capital cycle, appears to be more resilient. "I may not be smarter than others, but I am persistent."
This is her commonality with Bitcoin—both come from the margins, both are not well-regarded, and both have persisted for too long. One is a builder of brand and community; the other is a totem of a decentralized world. They did not originally belong to the main narrative of finance, but at this moment, they converge on the same balance sheet.
The two 'foreigners' have now reached the glowing center of the mainstream stage.
