Folklore on the Blockchain: Vietnam’s Cultural Crypto Renaissance

The rise of folklore-driven crypto coincides with Vietnam’s attempt to formalise a once-wild digital frontier. In 2025, the country ranked fourth globally in cryptocurrency adoption, according to Chainalysis, with an estimated 17 million participants and household ownership surpassing 20 percent—well ahead of regional peers like Indonesia and Thailand. Earlier surveys placed Vietnam among the top three nations for NFT ownership, at roughly 17.4 percent of adults.

Until recently, this creative boom unfolded in a legal vacuum. Cryptocurrencies remained non-legal tender, and NFT platforms operated without oversight. That changed in September 2025, when the government adopted the law launching a five-year pilot licensing regime for digital-asset trading platforms. The measure, part of Vietnam’s new Digital Technology Law, brings blockchain under the umbrella of the country’s $45 billion (NZ$77 billion est) digital-economy roadmap.

“The need now is to raise awareness among officials and the public about the inevitable transition to a digital culture,” says Dr. Le Cao Thang of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. “That means better legal frameworks, digital literacy, and a comprehensive cultural database.”

The scale justifies the urgency. Chainalysis estimates that on-chain value received by Vietnamese users reached $220 billion in the twelve months to June 2025, the third-largest total in Asia-Pacific after India and China. Analysts also note crypto holdings exceeding $100 billion nationwide, figures unimaginable only a few years ago.

“Blockchain should empower decentralized trust to become a vital characteristic of our society,” says Tri Pham, CTO of KardiaChain. “It’s not only about money; it’s about building systems our people can rely on.”

Tri Pham, CTO of KardiaChain. Photo: Supplied.

The precedent—and the warning—came earlier with Axie Infinity, the Ho Chi Minh City-based GameFi pioneer that at its 2021 peak processed $1.3 billion (NZ$2.2 billion est) in annual transactions before collapsing in 2022 following the $620 million (NZ$1.06 billion est) Ronin Bridge hack. That arc—from triumph to vulnerability—still defines Vietnam’s uneasy relationship with crypto: creative, ambitious, and exposed.

The Folklore Experiments

What began as a wave of speculation has evolved into something harder to categorise. Artists and coders speak of “cultural reinvention,” yet the line between innovation and appropriation is thin. “We’re proving NFTs can be culture,” says Dev Tam, co-founder of The Empty Box Club, though his tone carries both pride and caution.

The evidence is scattered across platforms where myth meets code. Xin Chao Meme Coin, launched in July 2025 on BNB Chain, recasts the everyday Vietnamese greeting as a tradeable asset. Its cat mascot—borrowed from Hanoi graffiti—stars in animated NFT drops reenacting Tet rituals and trickster tales. To some, it’s playful digital diplomacy; to others, a reminder of how easily civility itself can become commodified.

In TSP Cultivation GameFi, Daoist parables of self-discipline morph into rice-field simulations where players earn tokens for spiritual progress. Admirers call it a modern revival of agrarian myth; critics see a generation accessing tradition only through gamified rewards.

A80VN Odyssey, another of Tam’s ventures, resurrects 1980s Hanoi folklore through augmented-reality overlays that project ghosts and emperors onto present-day streets. NFT sales fund rural artist residencies, though skeptics question whether selling fragments of culture to save it creates a contradiction at the project’s core.

Even land is being rewritten in blockchain logic. The Lotus Fund offers fractional NFTs of mango farms and coastal resorts, letting overseas Vietnamese “own” symbolic slices of ancestral ground. Its founders frame it as a bridge between remittances and memory; regulators view it as speculation draped in sentiment.

Elsewhere, humor keeps the movement from becoming self-serious. SunPump Memes mints absurd images of dragon-pho battles in Saigon cafés, fusing street banter and folklore into a marketplace of laughter. At the opposite end, Zama’s Encrypted Identities experiments with cryptography to preserve the anonymity of shamans and storytellers—ancient secrecy reborn in encrypted code.

Together these projects form a fragile digital-heritage ecosystem where sincerity and satire coexist. Whether this is preservation or transformation remains open. Vietnam’s folklore is no longer confined to oral memory, yet it is no longer untouched by the logic of markets. It lives—restlessly—in code.

A golden dragon leading a boat carrying adorable elfs under the Vietnamese flag, symbolising strength and solidarity. Photo: Supplied.

Where Heritage Meets Hype

Vietnam’s cultural-crypto scene thrives less on venture capital than on community momentum. Most projects begin on X Spaces or Discord, then mint on global platforms. Creators describe themselves not as speculators but as curators of living heritage.

“I not only want to digitize the cultural industry to preserve heritage,” says Huy Nguyen, CEO of Phygital Labs, “but also aim to bring Vietnamese technology to the world map.”

In a youthful, mobile-first country—median age 33—blockchain promises both economic inclusion and cultural continuity. It connects a diaspora sending $18 billion (NZ$30.8 billion est) in annual remittances with local artisans now selling digital art or staging metaverse exhibitions.

But even believers admit the contradictions. “Meme coins attract newcomers and build communities,” notes Leon Nguyen of the Sui Vietnam Community, “yet they also come with significant risks.”

Those risks are tangible. Vietnam’s unregulated years spawned some of Asia’s largest crypto frauds, including a ₫95 trillion (NZ$6.5 billion est) gambling ring dismantled in 2023. Price swings can wipe out half of retail holdings in a single downturn. For artists, the danger is subtler: legends once sacred risk becoming disposable memes traded for profit.

Between Tradition and Transformation

Despite such fragility, optimism persists. At NFT exhibitions in Hanoi and Saigon, young artists speak of “decolonizing digital art,” using folklore to challenge Western dominance in the Web3 aesthetic. Their bilingual, locally rooted work suggests innovation need not erase identity.

Vietnam’s comparative advantage lies in that fusion of youth, heritage, and ambition. Where crypto elsewhere is largely financial, here it functions as social infrastructure—a medium of memory as much as of money.

The state now echoes that logic. The Digital Technology Law classifies blockchain within national cultural modernisation. Universities teach NFT design alongside lacquer and silk painting. “Our ambition is not only economic,” says a Hanoi curator involved in A80VN Odyssey. “It’s existential. If our myths can survive online, they can survive anywhere.”

Beyond Folklore

As Vietnam merges heritage with high tech, it confronts a question every crypto power faces: can the same technology that preserves a Tet greeting also sustain cultural value amid trillion-dollar volatility?

Vietnam’s adoption rates outpace those of the United States, U.K., or Japan, yet its ecosystem remains retail-driven and high-risk. In the West, crypto wealth concentrates among funds and billionaires; in Vietnam, it circulates among small investors and digital collectives. That democratization fuels creativity—but leaves projects vulnerable when markets collapse.

The distinction shapes how value itself is perceived. In Europe or the U.S., NFTs often cater to collectors; in Vietnam, they connect families, villages, and diasporas, turning folklore into a shared digital commons. Yet downturns are indiscriminate: when token prices fall, cultural initiatives disappear as quickly as they arise.

Still, the rewards are singular. For Vietnam, blockchain is less a speculative escape than an infrastructure for cultural resilience—a way to project soft power through folklore and to weave memory into modernization.

As Tri Pham predicts, “decentralized trust” could soon become Vietnam’s social currency—built as much on storytelling as on code. If that vision holds, Vietnam’s blockchain renaissance may not merely mint digital dragons; it may demonstrate how to preserve meaning as well as value, ensuring the tales of river guardians and trickster emperors endure long after the next market crash.

 -Asia Media Centre