From Labubu to Dragon Sniper, from Moutai to NFT: The Speculative Template of the Global Tulip Economy
The trendy toy circle, liquor circle, CSGO circle, perfume circle, and NFT circle are all speculating on tulips.
The following comprehensive overview of the tulip economy will reveal that everything constructed from human consensus is essentially the same.
1️⃣ Trendy Toy Circle: Labubu is the Doge of the trend world.
Labubu (The Monsters series) = High-end meme.
Release logic = Newbies draw blind boxes & veteran players grab hidden ones.
Secondary market premiums start at several times, with co-branded items even breaking ten thousand.
Hong Kong trend + exhibition exclusives + Weibo hype + community consensus = Emotional resonance.
Related points: Crypto circle grabbing WL, grabbing airdrops, speculating on totems.
✅ The essence is FOMO + scarcity + social credit symbol.
2️⃣ Liquor Circle: Moutai = The stablecoin of the physical world.
Feitian Moutai is regarded as hard currency, a high-end social tool.
Winning the lottery + channel monopoly + scalper arbitrage almost constitutes a grey market chain.
Ten years ago, hoarding a bottle of Moutai yielded returns comparable to A-shares.
A large number of liquor merchants are like LPs: repurchase/selling pressure/liquidity control.
Related points: Crypto circle market makers/stock traders controlling chip distribution.
✅ The Moutai circle follows the traditional KOL wheel: major distributors drive the market.
3️⃣ Gaming Circle: CSGO skins = The ancestor of digital assets.
A Dragon Sniper is worth the price of a house.
Stickers, skins, and wear determine value.
Steam market = internal market, grey trading = external market.
The investment logic is almost identical to cryptocurrency speculation: emotion + scarcity + going mainstream.
Related points: Steam is like an early DEX.
✅ Before the NFT explosion, this was a training camp for digital item speculation.
5️⃣ NFT Circle: Bored Apes are the pinnacle of trendy toy monetization.
BAYC and Azuki started with a trendy brand approach.
Profile picture = ticket = community = narrative machine.
The bear market has cooled down, but the gameplay is continuously adapted to memes for ongoing monetization; yes, good @pudgypenguins are doing offline trendy toys.
Related points: It is a projection of consensus.
✅ Both Bored Apes and Labubu are tulip avatars, just different mediums.
5️⃣ Beauty & Fashion Circle: Limited edition perfumes = Female version of blind box speculation.
Chanel No.5 limited edition, Dior Zodiac limited, Grandma's 999 gold tube.
Limited release every year, prices soar several times, social platforms find it hard to get a bottle.
Beauty influencers drive belief narratives; the FOMO emotion is very strong.
Related points: Female version of Labubu + NFT.
✅ Perfume is social currency.
The core of all tulip economies boils down to three words:
Supply: Artificially created scarcity (limited editions, whitelists, internal testing).
Trust: Establishing cultural beliefs (IP, KOL, narratives).
Transfer: Creating trading liquidity (internal market/external market, speculation mechanisms).
Labubu is not just cute; it is a model. We should think about how to replicate it, how we can invest in it, and also reflect on it.