The Divergent Value Logic Between Eastern and Western Crypto KOLs

Author: Weituo Crypto

"There's a lack of KOLs on Chinese Crypto Twitter. At least the English-speaking space has representative institutional voices like @hosseeb, @KyleSamani, @cdixon, while the Chinese side is entirely made up of self-media — this situation needs to change, otherwise Chinese CT will keep deteriorating."

I might have some credibility speaking on this matter.

Due to working on @Hertzflow_xyz, I frequently interact with VCs from both East and West.

Once you've engaged with them, you'll notice an extremely clear difference:

• The East cares deeply about how exactly your project makes money—tactics, token issuance, business models, operational logic—truly evaluating projects as if they were businesses;
• The West wants big directional narratives capable of delivering 10x or 100x returns.

This leads to a completely opposite definition of "key opinion" between East and West.

The Eastern approach is clearly deconstructive. I'm perhaps one of the most typical examples of an Eastern KOL.

The Western approach builds upon giants' shoulders—taking a well-known bottleneck in a highly valued or profitable industry and solving it through technology or new models. (As Professor Nie Xiao said perfectly: "Those who betray me get a million; those loyal to me earn hundreds of millions—it's all just a laugh away. Applause please.")

At the core of Western narratives lies the fact that even if you know the details don't hold up under scrutiny, it doesn't matter. Even if these stories can't withstand deep examination, it still doesn't matter—anything不利于unity should not be said.

Because they understand the real essence of this narrative logic: first craft a story to lure key capital into the game, then use the "infinite funding method" to launch saturation attacks against potential bottlenecks and competitors, and ultimately win.

That’s why the biggest narratives, strongest capital formations, and highest-tier stories all come from North America and are delivered through Western VCs: high-performance L1s, Rerererererestaking, Rollups, FHE, Hyperliquid, etc.

Yet, the vast majority of the industry's highest-revenue, most profitable businesses are largely controlled by Eastern players: CEXs, payments, DEXs (Pancake\Raydium), aggregators (Jupiter)...

Behind this, one factor is cost of capital (North American institutions enjoy near-zero financing costs due to state-enforced passive buyers like pension funds).

But more importantly, the social environment in Europe and America is simply too comfortable. Easterners have witnessed firsthand the thousand different "unnatural deaths" of even the best narratives and most impressive products. Our cultural tendency toward deconstruction is inherently more PVP than theirs.

Of course, they're now starting to look toward the East—the next generation is converging from different paths.

So I slightly disagree with the above "decline theory"—the East isn't declining, it's simply different, fundamentally and diametrically so.

Only when you can create fundamental intellectual impact on others does opinion leadership count as successful.

Then comes the question: does success mean Eastern KOLs must challenge the West's "less-scrutinized" narrative values and replace them with our own distinctive "value logic"?

"Since we can never out-Western them, let them live in fear trying to prove they understand us better than we do ourselves."