Interview: Presley, PANews
Edited by: Nancy, PANews
After leaving Northeast Securities a year ago, renowned economist Fu Peng has made a new move. As a well-known internet-famous economist in mainland China, Fu Peng has gained significant recognition and influence for his macroeconomic insights and straightforward style. Recently, the Hong Kong-listed company Xinhuo Group officially announced that Fu Peng has joined the company as Chief Economist. This crossover into the digital asset field quickly sparked widespread attention and discussion in the market.
On April 23, Fu Peng delivered his first public speech after joining at the Bitfire Day · 2026 Hong Kong Institutional Digital Wealth Management Summit. After the event, he was interviewed by PANews and other media outlets, sharing his reasons for choosing to enter the crypto asset field and his thoughts on future financial trends.
Fu Peng pointed out that we are currently in the second major integration period of finance and technology. The new wave of technological advancement, centered on AI, data, and computing power, is driving crypto assets into a new era of institutionalization, compliance, and financialization.
The New Integration of Finance and Technology, FICC+C is an Inevitable Choice
As a seasoned professional in the traditional FICC field, Fu Peng believes that the financial sector is undergoing a new major integration, entering a new phase of FICC+C, where the last C stands for Crypto. He hopes that his role in this process will be as landmark as that of Blythe Masters, who promoted the development of FICC (Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities) business at J.P. Morgan.
Fu Peng pointed out that finance is never static but constantly evolves with technological progress. Historically, FICC asset trading truly emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, alongside the computer and information technology revolution. Wall Street began integrating commodities, exchange rates, bonds, stocks, and other assets, giving rise to innovative products such as derivative pricing, futures, options, and interest rate swaps, which gradually became core profit sources for mainstream financial institutions.
Today's crypto assets are essentially a new asset class born alongside this new wave of technological advancement. This wave of technological progress is centered on AI, data, and computing power, and Bitcoin mining itself is a direct manifestation of computing power, a natural outcome of the era's productivity transformation. Sooner or later, such assets will be systematically incorporated into institutional investment portfolios, just like FICC was back then.
Fu Peng further pointed out that the GENIUS Act and the Clarity Act introduced by the U.S. essentially mark a critical conclusion to the regulatory梳理 of the past decade, most accurately positioning them as digital assets. Among them, stablecoin-related regulations relatively剥离 the payment and monetary attributes, allowing related assets to be more clearly positioned as financial tools with value storage and tradability. This signifies that traditional financial institutions can now enter the market for large-scale, compliant allocation.
In his view, this journey is extremely similar to the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, the main battlefield for stock trading shifted from the New York Stock Exchange to NASDAQ, with a large amount of trading completed on computer terminals, and speeds jumping from minutes to seconds, milliseconds, and potentially even bits in the future. Technology is not only changing trading methods but also重构 the entire financial landscape. 2025 can be seen as the second major integration of finance and technology since World War II, this time driven by computing power, data, and AI, underpinned by blockchain and encryption technologies, and正在重构 new production relations.
Therefore, everyone's understanding of the crypto circle must be completely different from the past decade. The past was an early stage of野蛮生长 and faith-driven development, but now it is entering a mature new phase of institutionalization,正规化, and financialization. "FICC + C" (traditional大类资产配置 plus crypto assets) is not a simple crossover but an inevitable choice顺应 this historical trend.
RWA is Just a Tool, Financial Innovation Differs Between East and West
Regarding the current RWA热潮, Fu Peng believes that RWA is essentially just a tool, not an independent asset class. It is like derivatives such as options, swaps, and forwards; the core is asset securitization,只不过 this process is moved onto the blockchain.
It can be understood as the on-chain securitization of real-world assets, or conversely, as the securitization of crypto assets. Just as the stock market evolved from早期只能做多 to gradually introducing short-selling mechanisms, single-stock options, swaps, forwards, and other derivative tools, RWA can also be叠加 on any asset to provide more financial functions.
Fu Peng emphasized that blockchain technology itself is also a tool that can be widely applied in numerous scenarios such as trade document anti-counterfeiting. Ultimately, these technological tools will give birth to new asset forms and applications, but RWA itself should not be treated as an independent new asset for speculation or simplistic understanding.
In terms of attracting international capital, Fu Peng believes that sectors like RWA and other crypto-related areas are unlikely to become the main driver for Hong Kong to significantly attract overseas funds. From the underlying civilizational logic, the Asian region is generally偏向保守主义 in financial innovation. The logic of Western海洋文明 is "everything not prohibited is permitted," encouraging bold exploration and开拓, exposing problems during practice, and then having regulations gradually follow up,属于 "innovate first, regulate later." In contrast, East Asian文明 tends to "宁可缺毋滥,宁可慢毋快" (rather lack than abound, rather slow than fast),习惯 waiting for others to pave the way and fully verify risks before稳妥跟进.
In fact, FICC business in the East did not start until 2009 precisely because it needed to wait for Western markets to be fully verified before daring to advance on a large scale. Hong Kong, as a window connecting East and West, is relatively more open than the mainland but still in an intermediate state. It既 wants to seize efficiency and opportunities,又要 ensure fairness and risk control, so it often needs to find a谨慎的平衡 between the two.
Of course, stablecoins must be done. Fu Peng believes that if not, there is a high risk of being left behind in the next financial era. But at the same time, they cannot be completely handed over to the private sector, so policies often need to balance innovation and risk control. As for RMB stablecoins, he believes they will eventually come, but the process will be quite lengthy. They will definitely wait until the external world has exposed various risks and basically趟完 the pitfalls before carefully advancing at their own pace.
Macro Bear Market Expected to End This Year, Recommends Prioritizing AI Stocks
As crypto assets gradually move into the mainstream, macro liquidity is becoming the dominant factor influencing the market.
Fu Peng believes that when crypto assets are formally incorporated into the traditional financial system and become a standard asset class, they will resonate significantly with the financial framework built over the past 40 years, their correlation will greatly increase, and their trading logic will gradually merge with the framework of traditional financial assets.
In the past, the crypto asset market was more similar to early Hong Kong or A-shares, where the core driving factors were流通筹码,大户持仓, and庄家行为, rather than macroeconomics. Investors mainly focused on how many筹码 a certain address or wallet held, who was selling, who was狙击, without needing to深入研究 macro liquidity. This was a typical characteristic of the early crypto circle, when there was a lack of large-scale institutional participation.
Now, this situation has changed. As institutionalization continues to increase, the performance of large crypto assets is becoming closer to mature markets. For example, it is now difficult for companies like Alibaba and Tencent to experience the severe manipulation driven solely by筹码 as in the early days. At this point, macroeconomics and liquidity begin to become important influencing factors because they directly act on institutions'大类资产配置组合, which in turn transmits to crypto assets.
Fu Peng pointed out that this共振 phenomenon has already emerged. AI concept stocks (like Nvidia) and crypto assets have begun to show明显的联动. The path of liquidity挤压估值 in traditional markets is having a substantive impact on crypto assets.
Analyzing the current market environment, Fu Peng stated that since last November, the contraction of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet to a certain extent has led to an overall tightening of liquidity. While the market generally focuses on interest rate cuts, many people overlook that liquidity is not just about the price of interest rates but also the quantity of money. When the liquidity squeeze caused by balance sheet reduction exceeds the stimulus from rate cuts, the overall market liquidity is actually tightening. In such an environment, all high-valuation assets will be the first to come under pressure. This logic has long been common in traditional assets, and over the past six or seven years, crypto assets have also been明显 affected similarly, indicating that the联动 between the crypto market and traditional finance is gradually deepening.
Regarding the current bear market cycle, Fu Peng judges that it may last until the end of this year. He believes that there is no need for过早 precise predictions for this type of macro-driven adjustment; taking it step by step is sufficient. When macro liquidity becomes the dominant factor, the signals for timing will naturally become clearer.
Regarding the Bitcoin four-year cycle theory, Fu Peng clearly stated that it is no longer applicable; it was a product of the previous era. When crypto assets enter the era of institutional asset management, the influence of大户行为 on prices significantly decreases, and market volatility will gradually reduce.
He emphasized that simply predicting prices for any asset is not advisable. Commodities have cost lines for reference, stocks have corporate profits as support, while current Bitcoin, although it has value storage function, lacks分子价值 in the traditional sense. It is more like a purely valuation-driven, value-maintaining tradable financial asset, which is also the most standard definition given by U.S. regulation.
Bitcoin's supply has a hard上限, unlike traditional commodities affected by miners' production costs and extraction节奏, and unlike the stock market where total market capitalization can be continuously expanded through IPOs. This is both an advantage of its scarcity and a limitation on its future maximum proportion in global asset allocation; it cannot increase positions indefinitely like配置 stocks or traditional commodities.
In terms of asset allocation, Fu Peng offered advice. If seeking more stable value-type assets, priority should be given to配置 AI-related stocks; Bitcoin is in an intermediate position—it is a relatively certain variety among crypto assets but will not occupy a high allocation proportion like traditional大类资产. If hoping to放大波动率, then Ethereum can be chosen.
