Original ｜ Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author ｜ Golem (@web3_golem)

From the official announcement of entering the crypto industry to being ridiculed, Fu Peng took only 5 days.

On April 20, former chief economist of Northeast Securities, Fu Peng, announced that he joined Hong Kong-listed company New Fire Group as chief economist. Once the news was released, New Fire Group's stock price rose more than 12% at one point. Three days after joining New Fire, Fu Peng attended the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival and gave a speech. In his speech, he proposed that the future financial market will enter the "FICC+C" era, meaning that major asset allocation will include crypto assets. Finally, Fu Peng addressed why he crossed over to the crypto industry: "Because your (crypto) industry has matured to the point where it can be included in investment portfolios."

Fu Peng's high attitude displayed in this speech may have already buried the seeds for his subsequent conflict with crypto KOLs. On April 25, Fu Peng posted that the funding rate for Bitcoin perpetual contracts is similar to the deferred costs in traditional financial gold spot trading. This statement was not unusual in itself, but Fu Peng later added that many people do not understand what he is saying, and only early large-scale BTC holders and those at a certain level would understand his meaning.

This self-importance and "those who understand get it" comments drew disdain from the crypto community, with many ridiculing Fu Peng in the comments, the most representative being the meme "Summon Bei to possess him," implying that Fu Peng's past statements were chasing the market highs and lows, with no real strength (Odaily note: Summon Bei is a KOL in the crypto space who previously suffered significant losses as a fund manager, losing over 20 million RMB worth of ETH in one go, with a loss rate as high as 99%).

Surprisingly, under the "give and take," Fu Peng was the first to break defensively, blocking all KOLs and crypto practitioners who ridiculed him or made jokes at his expense. This behavior of blocking without reason further enraged the crypto community, exposing the true nature hiding behind Fu Peng's seemingly polished persona.

Background of "Impressive" Fu Peng

Who is Fu Peng? Indigenous players in crypto may not be familiar with him, but those who often pay attention to macroeconomic and major asset topics will definitely recognize this name.

Public records show that Fu Peng's early career was mainly in the UK. He graduated from the University of Reading in the UK and joined Lehman Brothers (then the world's fourth-largest investment bank) in 2004; from 2005 to the end of 2008, he worked at the event-driven strategy fund under Solomon International Investment Group, serving as the global macro hedge strategy design director; after returning to China in 2008, he held positions as chief macroeconomic advisor or chief macro-related roles in institutions such as China Zhongti Group and Galaxy Futures.

Fu Peng became known to a wider public after joining Northeast Securities as chief economist in 2020. Initially, he mainly served private banking clients, providing wealth allocation advice from a macro perspective. In 2024, after several speeches that differed from mainstream macroeconomic views, he successfully broke through the mold, becoming a "internet celebrity economist," with snippets of his speeches widely spread on social media and sparking discussions. According to public reports, at that time, Fu Peng had over 4 million followers on the Weibo platform alone.

However, the good times did not last long. At the end of 2024, Fu Peng's accounts were frozen on multiple platforms due to his long-standing bearish comments on the Chinese economy and controversial statements. By late April 2025, Fu Peng stated that he needed to undergo surgery and rest due to health issues, and thus left Northeast Securities.

Some past statements of Fu Peng summarized by the community

This is just Fu Peng's professional resume. After blocking several crypto KOLs, his past experiences related to crypto were also dug up. In 2024, Fu Peng expressed a bearish view on Bitcoin and gold in a paid economic course analyzing gold, but later faced refund requests when his forecasts deviated from actual price performances.

In 2025, Fu Peng also involved in the crypto field in his video series course "Fu Peng Says" Season 6, promoting paid courses like “BTC: Financial Assets in the AI Era” and “Stablecoin Reconstructing the Global Monetary Order,” sold in a package for 1798 RMB, at a time when Bitcoin reached a new high of 120,000 USD, while Bitcoin's price is now fluctuating between 75,000 to 80,000 USD.

Fu Peng's paid course

From the above experiences, it can be seen that Fu Peng is not a traditional academic economist but more like an economic commentator or macro analyst, providing directional predictions aimed at guiding trades without personally engaging in trading. After being collectively banned by domestic financial media at the end of 2024, Fu Peng's reputation and the gold content of his identity have sharply declined, and even now his statements are still unable to be spread on mainstream social media platforms in China.

Given this, why did New Fire still invite Fu Peng to serve as chief economist?

This goes back to last August when former HashKey Exchange CEO Weng Xiaoqi officially joined New Fire as CEO. Upon assuming office, Weng Xiaoqi set a new strategy for New Fire, which is to become a private banking-level digital asset manager, specifically serving high-net-worth clients and institutions, providing a full range of services from crypto asset allocation to custody.

Under this new strategy, Fu Peng indeed became the most suitable candidate, as he can act as a trusted intermediary for New Fire in traditional finance, and based on his past career experience, can also bring client resources relevant to New Fire.

New Fire Group is a company that has gone through renaming and downsizing from the "Huobi series listed platform." Although it has obtained compliance licenses, the essence of doing private banking business is still selling trust. Due to New Fire’s qualifications and brand image, it is difficult to gain the trust of traditional family offices and high-net-worth individuals alone. Therefore, Fu Peng, with a background in a "leading economist" and a certain level of public recognition in the financial sector, can add a layer of client recognition for New Fire.

Additionally, Fu Peng, as an "internet celebrity economist," possesses a strong market translation ability. He knows how to translate obscure and complex topics like macro economics, major assets, and debt cycles for the public and clients and also knows how to stimulate the appetite of high-net-worth individuals. Finally, Fu Peng's past core influence radius may have covered a group of mid-to-high net worth clients needing asset allocation. With his past resource accumulation, Fu Peng can improve the customer reach rate of New Fire's digital asset private banking business.

Why is Fu Peng unadapted in the crypto space?

Success and failure arise from the same root. The conflict between Fu Peng and the crypto community is essentially due to his traditional finance background clashing with the crypto industry's environment.

The integration of traditional finance and the crypto industry began only in the past two years, while before and at the beginning of Bitcoin's birth, the relationship between the crypto industry and traditional finance was irreconcilable. The crypto industry questioned the inefficiency and decay of the traditional financial system, hence giving rise to a native spirit of anti-authority, decentralization, and equality. Although the two fields have now stopped fighting, this spirit still exists.

Having been accustomed to the discourse system of traditional finance, Fu Peng has yet to adapt to the public opinion environment of the crypto industry. He is used to the one-way output of speeches and private seminars and accustomed to taking a preachy posture that doesn't allow for direct challenges from the audience. He does not understand the traditional existence of equality and instant communication in the crypto industry and is unaware that even CZ and He Yi sometimes face public questioning from the community. Therefore, after being mocked by the community, he resorted to the traditional finance blogger approach—blocking, deleting comments, only filtering out without refuting.

At the same time, the crypto industry is also changing. In the past, when crypto was still a marginal track, anyone with some fame in traditional finance, culture, and regulatory circles who stood up for the crypto industry would gain goodwill and even profit from the heat. However, now one of the most powerful people in the world, U.S. President Trump and his family, also stand up for crypto and draw money from the crypto industry. The crypto industry's charm for celebrities has long been removed.

Today’s crypto industry is more focused on what you can bring rather than who you are. Fu Peng appears to be an economist but is in reality an analyst who does not hold positions and only talks grandly; this image is obviously unappealing in the crypto industry.

In fact, Fu Peng has only put one foot into the crypto industry as he still analyzes crypto using his traditional finance analytical framework, continues to serve traditional finance clients, and only recognizes the part where the crypto industry intersects with traditional finance. There is still a wall between him and the real crypto community; people on both sides look down on each other, but Fu Peng does not care because we are not his target clients.

Latest Developments

According to crypto KOL Crypto Circle Veteran, Fu Peng explained that Twitter is not operated by him but entrusted to an outsourcing team, completely unaware of the mass blocking of crypto KOLs. This again reflects the distance between Fu Peng, who comes from traditional finance, and the crypto industry; he does not want to communicate directly with the crypto community. Of course, this may also just be Fu Peng's "passing the buck" excuse, perhaps to clear himself of being concerned with welfare ladies.

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