Interview by: Presley , PANews

Compiled by: Nancy, PANews

A year after leaving Northeast Securities, renowned economist Fu Peng has made a new move. As a well-known online economist in mainland China, Fu Peng enjoys high visibility and influence due to his macroeconomic insights and straightforward style. Recently, Hong Kong-listed company Newfire Group officially announced that Fu Peng has joined the company as its chief economist. This move into the digital asset field has quickly attracted widespread attention and discussion in the market.

On April 23, Fu Peng delivered his first public speech since joining Bitfire Day 2026 Hong Kong Institutional Digital Wealth Management Summit. Following the event, he was interviewed by PANews and other media outlets, sharing his reasons for joining the crypto asset field and his thoughts on future financial trends.

Fu Peng pointed out that we are currently in the second major period of integration between finance and technology. A new wave of technology, with AI, data and computing power at its core, is driving crypto assets toward a new era of institutionalization, compliance and financialization.

The new integration of finance and technology makes FICC+C an inevitable choice.

As a seasoned professional in the traditional FICC (Fixed Income, Foreign Exchange, and Commodities) field, Fu Peng believes that the financial sector is undergoing a new major integration, entering a new era of FICC+C, with the final C being Crypto. He hopes that his role in this process will be as significant as that of Bryce Masters at Morgan Stanley when he spearheaded the development of FICC.

Fu Peng pointed out that finance is never static, but rather evolves with technological advancements. Historically, FICC (Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities) asset trading truly took off in the 1970s and 80s, coinciding with the computer and information technology revolution. Wall Street began to integrate assets such as commodities, exchange rates, bonds, and stocks, giving rise to innovative products such as derivatives pricing, futures, options, and interest rate swaps, which gradually became the core profit source for mainstream financial institutions.

Today's crypto assets are essentially a new asset class born alongside a new wave of technological advancements. This wave of technological progress centers on AI, data, and computing power, and Bitcoin mining itself is a direct manifestation of computing power, a natural result of this era's productivity revolution. Sooner or later, these assets will be systematically incorporated into institutional portfolio frameworks, just like FICC (Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities) were in their time.

Fu Peng further pointed out that the GENIUS Act and Clarity Act introduced in the United States have essentially brought a crucial end to the regulatory process of the past decade, with the most accurate positioning being digital assets. Among them, the regulations related to stablecoins relatively separate their payment and monetary attributes, allowing these assets to be more clearly positioned as financial instruments with value storage and tradability. This signifies that traditional financial institutions can truly enter the market on a large scale and in compliance with regulations.

In his view, this process is remarkably similar to that of the 1970s and 80s. At that time, the main battlefield for stock trading shifted from the NYSE to Nasdaq, with a large number of transactions completed on computer terminals, and speeds leaping from minutes to seconds, milliseconds, and potentially even bits in the future. Technology is not only changing the way transactions are conducted, but also reshaping 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, and based on blockchain and encryption technologies, it is reshaping new production relations.

Therefore, everyone's understanding of the cryptocurrency market must be completely different from that of the past decade. The past was a stage of early, unregulated growth and faith-driven development, while now we are entering a mature new stage of institutionalization, formalization, and financialization. "FICC + C" (traditional asset allocation plus crypto assets) is not a simple crossover, but an inevitable choice in line with this historical trend.

RWA is just a tool; financial innovation varies between East and West.

Regarding the current RWA craze, Fu Peng believes that RWA is essentially just a tool, not an independent asset class. Like options, swaps, and forwards, its core is asset securitization, only the process has been moved to 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 only allowing long positions to gradually introducing short-selling mechanisms, stock options, swaps, forwards, and other derivative instruments, RWA can be overlaid on any asset to provide more financial functions.

Fu Peng emphasized that blockchain technology itself is also a tool that can be widely used in many scenarios such as anti-counterfeiting of trade documents. Ultimately, these technological tools will give rise to new asset forms and applications, but RWA itself should not be treated as an independent new asset for speculation or simplistic understanding.

Regarding attracting international capital, Fu Peng believes that crypto-related sectors such as RWA are unlikely to be the main driver for Hong Kong to attract significant overseas funds. From a fundamental civilizational perspective, Asia generally leans towards conservatism in financial innovation. Western maritime civilization operates on the principle of "anything not prohibited is permitted," encouraging bold exploration and development, allowing problems to surface in practice, and then gradually being addressed by regulators – a "innovation first, regulation later" approach. East Asian civilization, on the other hand, tends to prioritize quality over quantity and speed, preferring to wait until others have proven their methods and fully validated the risks before cautiously following suit.

In fact, the FICC business in the East only started in 2009, precisely because it needed to wait for the Western market to fully validate its capabilities before daring to promote it on a large scale. As a window connecting East and West, Hong Kong is relatively more open than the mainland, but it is still in a middle ground, wanting to seize efficiency and opportunities while ensuring fairness and controllable risks. Therefore, it often needs to find a careful balance between the two.

Of course, stablecoins are a must. Fu Peng believes that if they aren't, they risk being left behind in the next financial era. However, they can't completely leave it to the private sector, so policymakers often need to strike a balance between innovation and risk control. As for a stablecoin for the RMB, he believes it will eventually arrive, but it will be a long process. It will wait until the external world has exposed all the risks and navigated the pitfalls before cautiously advancing at its own pace.

The macro bear market is expected to end this year; we recommend prioritizing AI stocks.

As crypto assets gradually become mainstream, macro liquidity is becoming the dominant factor influencing the market.

Fu Peng believes that once 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 be greatly enhanced, and their trading logic will gradually merge with the framework of traditional financial assets.

In the past, the cryptocurrency market was more similar to the early Hong Kong or A-share markets, with the core driving factors being the circulating supply, large holders' positions, and market manipulation, rather than the macroeconomy. Investors mainly focused on how many tokens a particular address or wallet held, who was selling, and who was buying, without needing to delve into macro liquidity. This was a typical characteristic of the early cryptocurrency market, lacking large-scale institutional participation.

Today, this situation has changed. As institutionalization increases, the performance of large-cap crypto assets is becoming more and more like that of mature markets. For example, Alibaba and Tencent are no longer subject to the kind of drastic manipulation driven solely by tokens that existed in the past. At this point, macroeconomic factors and liquidity have become important influencing factors, as they directly affect institutional asset allocation portfolios and thus impact crypto assets.

Fu Peng pointed out that this resonance phenomenon has already emerged. There is a clear correlation between AI concept stocks (such as Nvidia) and crypto assets, and the path of liquidity squeezing valuations in traditional markets is having a substantial impact on crypto assets.

Regarding the current market environment, Fu Peng analyzed that since November of last year, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet has shrunk to a certain extent, leading to a tightening of overall liquidity. Although the market generally focuses on interest rate cuts, many people have overlooked the fact that liquidity is not only a matter of interest rate prices, but also a matter of the quantity of money. When the liquidity squeeze caused by balance sheet reduction exceeds the stimulus brought by interest rate cuts, the liquidity of the entire market is actually tightening. In this environment, all overvalued assets will be the first to be pressured. This logic has long been common in traditional assets, and in the past six or seven years, crypto assets have also been significantly affected in a similar way, indicating that the linkage between the crypto market and traditional finance is gradually deepening.

Fu Peng predicts that the current bear market cycle may continue until the end of this year. He believes that such macro-driven adjustments do not require precise predictions in advance; it is best to proceed cautiously, taking it one step at a time. When macro liquidity becomes the dominant factor, the timing signals will naturally become clearer.

Regarding the four-year cycle theory of Bitcoin, Fu Peng clearly pointed out that it is no longer applicable; it is a product of the previous era. As crypto assets enter the era of institutional asset management, the influence of large investors' behavior on prices will significantly decrease, and market volatility will gradually decline.

He emphasized that it is inappropriate to simply predict the price of any asset. Commodities have cost lines to refer to, and stocks are supported by corporate profits. While Bitcoin currently possesses value storage capabilities, it lacks a traditional intrinsic value. It is more like a purely valuation-driven, tradable financial asset with value preservation functions, which is also the most standard definition of it by US regulators.

Bitcoin's supply has a hard cap, unlike traditional commodities which are affected by miners' production costs and mining pace, and unlike the stock market which can continuously expand its total market capitalization through IPOs. This scarcity is both an advantage and a limitation on its maximum proportion in future global asset allocation, preventing unlimited increases in holdings like stocks or traditional commodities.

Regarding asset allocation, Fu Peng offered the following advice: If seeking more stable value assets, AI-related stocks should be prioritized; Bitcoin occupies a middle position, being a relatively certain type of cryptocurrency, but it won't occupy a large allocation proportion like traditional asset classes. If amplifying volatility is desired, Ethereum can be chosen.