By Lin Wanwan

“Integration is only one-way. You integrate with Wall Street, Wall Street will not integrate with you.”

On the morning of April 23, 2026, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Fu Peng was giving a speech on the integration of FICC and crypto assets.

This was Fu Peng's first public dialogue since joining the New Fire Group earlier this year. His title at New Fire is Chief Economist. On the day the news was announced, New Fire's stock price rose. He waved it off, saying it had nothing to do with him, “The market is just understanding FICC+C.”

The New Fire Group is a Hong Kong-listed crypto financial company with deep roots in the Huobi ecosystem. Its current focus is to transform crypto asset management, custody, and exchanges into a compliance platform that traditional financial institutions can understand and feel safe entering.

FICC (Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities) is an asset trading framework that emerged on Wall Street after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the late 1970s. Fu Peng entered this field in 1995 when China did not yet have stock index futures.

Now, he has shifted his focus to crypto assets.

Fu Peng's entry into crypto has nothing to do with faith. He is blunt about it, stating that he is not a believer and never will be. “Religious faith will not baptize greedy Wall Street,” he repeated this statement in interviews. “If religious faith could baptize greedy Wall Street, then Wall Street would just donate its earnings directly to the church, wouldn't it?”

He began to pay close attention to crypto around the time of the crash in 2022.

At the end of 2021, in an interview with traditional financial media, Fu Peng had “guessed” that Bitcoin would be halved. His logic was very FICC-oriented. If Bitcoin, following Cathie Wood's ARK Invest and other early-stage AI assets, plunged in a liquidity crunch, then it was a tradable asset attached to liquidity and valuation, not a matter of faith. Later, Bitcoin plummeted from $60-70K to $20K.

After the halving, the few surviving top figures in the crypto industry began searching the entire web for the person who had predicted “Bitcoin will be halved” at the end of 2021. They found Fu Peng.

“They started to deeply contemplate the reasons for asset fluctuations,” Fu Peng said. “With hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin in hand, you can't just sit still, right? To manage it, you first need to know what it really is.”

In his view, 2026 will be the “Chinese Crypto Year,” with regulation being the key.

The United States spent a full decade layering the regulatory attributes of crypto assets, with the payment attributes fully delegated to stablecoins, and Bitcoin clearly defined as a commodity with store of value function. Only after the architecture became clear did traditional finance have a reason to enter the scene.

"This is like in the late 1970s after the Bretton Woods system was abandoned, Wall Street suddenly had foreign exchange assets, commodity assets, and interest rate swaps," said Fu Peng. "JP Morgan's Blythe Masters did not invent financial derivatives, she just seized that historical opportunity."

Fu Peng believes that what he is seizing now is the next such opportunity.

Below is the transcript of the dialogue between BlockBeats and Fu Peng in this rhythm.

Ⅰ. "The collapse in 2022 was the starting point for me and the crypto circle"

Q: Why did you choose to join Xinhuo at this time?

Fu Peng: It was initially during that event in 2022. At that time, Bitcoin plunged from $60-70K to just over $20K, which definitely had a big impact on hodlers. But I think the bigger impact on them was not the gains or losses, but that they began to deeply consider one thing, what is the reason behind the volatility of this asset?

You must find the reason for its volatility. Otherwise, you would be at a loss. You have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of coins, how do you manage these assets? You can't just hold them and do nothing, right? If you want to manage them, you need to know what this thing is in order to manage it.

Later, I found out that they were searching the whole internet to find out who had predicted that Bitcoin would be halved by the end of 2021. They were looking into the logic behind that person. Then they found my interview at the time, thinking it sounded the most reliable, so they started to get in touch.

Getting in touch is very simple, we sat down, asked each other, what was the situation in the crypto circle back then? How does our traditional finance view this thing now?

I have a background in traditional finance. When you talk about exchanges, I have been involved in counter trading approved by the provincial financial office, OTC, commodity exchanges, and more. So, from the bottom I quickly understood what the core of your so-called blockchain exchange is. It was easy for everyone to resonate. Although you are in the crypto circle and I am in traditional finance, the underlying discoveries were the same.

Through communication, we started to complement each other. You tell me about the development process you went through back then, what the understanding was, and then I'll tell you about our current understanding of this thing. After exchanging, a consensus was reached. When consensus is reached, both sides feel meaningful.

For me, adding a new asset class allocation, it will become a new part of Wall Street. Just like in the late 1970s, after the Bretton Woods system was decoupled, we had currency assets, commodity assets, interest rate swaps, all the same.

JP Morgan's Blythe Masters was a key figure of that era. She took advantage of the historical opportunity from the late 1970s to early 1980s and essentially created the core of Wall Street's financial derivatives and FICC.

With the current boost of AI technology, the convergence of the two sides will bring about a similar opportunity. Isn't a strong partnership the best? 1+1 is greater than 2.

That's what I'm saying, they are very different now from the past. Very different.

II. "Fundamentalism is a religion, not an asset"

Q: You just used a very Crypto term, "fundamentalism." Where did you learn this term?

Fu Peng: Definitely from you guys, the original group of people. I'm friends with them.

Those who know me know that we do any strategic trading with first-hand research. In 2012, when Abe took office and the yen depreciated, Besant (current U.S. Treasury Secretary) went from Hong Kong to Tokyo for research, and I immediately followed back to Beijing for research. What we like to do is never engage in a battle without preparation.

Do you know where I was 15 to 20 days before the Iran incident? I was in Abu Dhabi, looking across at Iran. Not that I was going to run. Many friends say, "In these more than ten years that we have observed Fu, whenever a major event is approaching, he is definitely there."

If I want to understand the crypto circle, I won't look up information online. The simplest way is to know the few big shots who are currently alive. Knowing one of them is enough to know them all, just chat around.

Q: After chatting with them for over a year, what is your biggest takeaway?

Fu Peng: Let me tell you clearly, these top people are no longer the same. It's the people below who still think they are the group who once adhered to fundamentalism, but you are no longer. They are now no different from Wall Street, from Wall Street people, no difference at all.

Q: Among these top players, who has had the biggest impact on you?

Fu Peng: They have all realized that their understanding is similar. I don't care what they say outside, but in private conversations, their understanding is similar. It's definitely not what you are thinking, not the story of them from the past.

Of course, there are also some people who have not kept up with the times, still stuck in the previous stage, unaware that the era is changing, the market is changing, the structure is changing, and the participants are changing. So, whether in public or private, they still cling to the old concepts. But the few I have interacted with are not like that.

That's also what I said, they have actually already integrated with Wall Street.

Q: With this level of funding, is the old way of doing things no longer feasible?

Fu Peng: There is no issue of feasibility. I think if you look at China, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange, the Dalian Commodity Exchange, and now there is also the Guangzhou Futures Exchange, do you think all these are compliant?

Did China ever experience that wild growth phase? Of course. What was the situation in the stock market in the 90s?

But after a round of financial regulation in '02 and '03, another round in '14 and '15, is the era after these two rounds still the same? Of course not.

Those who used to participate in Shanghai stock subscription with their ID cards, participated in warrants, participated in national bond futures blow-ups, and participated in Hainan red beans and green beans, if they stick to the principles of that era and come back to play in this market now, is it still the same thing? Of course it is the same thing, it is just a product of that period.

Bitcoin, crypto, from our perspective, there is no difference.

III. "2026 is the first year, and everyone will remember this event in the future"

Q: Why were most people in the crypto community young in earlier years, or middle-aged and elderly people with belief?

Fu Peng: There is a reason why real financial people did not get involved. In the early days, we might not necessarily win, or the price we pay will be very high.

Have these few big shots not paid a price? They all have. For people in traditional finance, paying that price is not worth it.

But now, everyone is starting to get involved. Personally, I think 2026 will be a milestone year. Looking back in the future, 2026 may well be remembered as the year a traditional FICC practitioner entered the crypto space, marking the year for the Chinese crypto community, as the year of convergence between traditional finance and crypto finance, also signaling a completely different stage for the crypto market and crypto assets.

Q: What are the key variables you see?

Fu Peng: The biggest variable in this industry is that the compliance and regulatory layers established over the past decade have made the logic line attribute of it as a transactional asset very clear. Secondly, Wall Street's continuous involvement, traditional funds' continuous involvement, and the increasing proportion as an asset allocation. So, we will naturally enter.

Q: So it's no longer easy to take it out of the trading layer?

Fu Peng: It's like 50 years ago, before the 70s, you could only trade stocks, floor trading, hand signals, chalkboards. By the 70s, after the 80s, you could start trading foreign exchange rates, commodities, bonds; you could use interest rate swaps, swaps, financial derivatives to trade. It naturally enters your trading sequence.

Did it disappear? Definitely not. It will only increase. It's like saying another part has been added now.

IV. "Bitcoin is not digital gold, it is an AI asset"

Q: You do not agree that Bitcoin is "digital gold," so where is its price anchored?

Fu Peng: It is anchored in liquidity and valuation.

Q: Where is the valuation logic?

Fu Peng: It's not "its" valuation. It is the valuation of an AI asset.

Think about the creation of Bitcoin. Essentially, it is a set of computing power plus an algorithm, and finally, the addition of "value maintenance." I don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, but we are very clear about its design path because this path is the same as the core logic of designing any type of financial asset.

For a financial asset to experience price fluctuations, to resonate value with everyone, that is, what you call "consensus," it must have several attributes.

Let me give you an example, the butterfly knife in CSGO. It is continuously generated in small quantities, difficult to obtain, so its price can fluctuate and rise, the reason is that it has value maintenance. If suddenly 1000 butterfly knives were flooded into the market today, that would be crazy.

Bitcoin, from its design, has successfully run through all the links of an AI asset, from front-end hardware, middle-tier computing power, back-end algorithm, to value generation, and then to limiting the quantity to maintain value. If you look at this chain, it is a standard natural AI generation path with a value maintenance function. This model has emerged.

Q: So does it really have no "value"?

Fu Peng: What is the value of Bitcoin? Its payment function has been stripped away. So where is the value function? In fact, it's just like gold.

Then tell me, where is the value function of gold? It's in faith. Do you really use a gold bar to buy coffee? That's not possible either.

Five, "Stablecoins Are Offense, Not Defense"

Q: There is a view in the industry that Bitcoin will become the reservoir for a USD stablecoin. In this round, the United States is trying to solve the US debt problem, and the value of overissued stablecoins will eventually be reflected in the Bitcoin price. Do you agree?

Fu Peng: I do not agree.

Although stablecoins are essentially fronted by US debt, their true attribute is the payment function. So the real goal of stablecoins is to bring all areas that were previously uncovered by traditional financial infrastructure into the USD payment system.

If you think of it as defense, it's better to understand it as offense. It's not defense, it's offense.

What is the path of traditional finance? Apply for a license, establish a bank branch, set up safes, ATMs, tellers, backend data, fiber optics. Now, look at the future of Africa. No banks, no branches—just install a Starlink in a supermarket, and the supermarket becomes a trading place. I buy a bottle of water from you, just a tap of the wallet to complete the transaction.

Why can't stablecoins fluctuate? Because only when they don't fluctuate, are they most easily accepted by the public as a payment tool. This also answers the earlier question, why can't Bitcoin be used for payments? Its volatility is too high.

Q: If Bitcoin is not a reservoir, what is its position in the entire system as an asset class?

Fu Peng: Ultimately, Bitcoin will definitely be part of diversified asset allocation.

If you have a large amount of income in your left hand, often in the form of items or capital, you will allocate to US debt, US stocks, gold, and crypto assets. In reserve assets, the proportion of crypto assets will slowly rise like gold. What will rise the most is equities, not commodities.

The total supply of Bitcoin is limited. If you consider it as "US debt," then its price can rise infinitely. Is that possible? It's impossible. Is all the value anchored to one thing? Impossible, if that thing crashes, everything dies.

So you can say it will be included as one of the reserve assets, and that statement is fine. But saying "it will become a reserve asset" are two different concepts, completely different. The former brings the imagination of an infinite price increase; the latter is just an extension of the normal framework, not changing the asset's inherent logic of change.

Six. "The Fusion is Only One Way – You Fuse with Wall Street"

Q: This conference is notably different because people from traditional financial backgrounds (including you and Xiao Feng) are here. What kind of environmental change is this?

Fu Peng: It has nothing to do with the "conference." When we choose to do something, we don't think too much about ourselves but rather about the era.

Just like when you ask me why I moved from London to China in May and June of '09. The official title you see is not what we were actually doing. At that time, the core opportunity was a single trade in global assets, where low-interest US dollars entered high-interest Chinese yuan.

The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis took 6 to 8 years to resolve. During this phase, interest rates would remain very low, and the core of financial transactions was carry trading. Low-interest USD was borrowed by Chinese residents, and Chinese yuan assets offered high interest and returns. All you needed to do was match the borrowing side overseas with the asset side domestically.

With such a significant opportunity, why stay in London? Of course, you had to be on the front line.

Now it's the same. We chose this direction because we have already seen that crypto assets will rapidly become part of Wall Street in the next 5 to 10 years.

When I talk about fusion, there is ultimately only one direction for fusion – you can only fuse with Wall Street; it is impossible for Wall Street to fuse with you. You are thinking too much. Wall Street will change due to blockchain technology and AI, it will change, but it will not fuse with you. It can only be you fusing with it.

Since both sides are to merge and become a part of each other, how can we fall behind? Whoever takes the first step will leave a mark in history. Xiao Feng and the others can be considered relatively early.

Seven. "We Own Bitcoin, but Not in the Way You Understand"

Q: Do you hold Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Fu Peng: Yes, we hold. But our "holding" is not the same as how you understand it.

The crypto industry calls it holding with belief. For us, it absolutely is not and cannot be. It is only a part of asset allocation.

It's like when I deal with the FICC asset class, I allocate forex trading assets, interest rate assets, commodity assets, equity assets, bonds, stocks, commodity ETFs, and use various tools like swaps, options, forwards, etc. Bitcoin, for me, is just one type of asset, and I will also allocate it.

CME has bitcoin futures, and you have bitcoin spot here. Will we use perpetual contracts? No. That type of tool is for high leverage and is not suitable for asset allocation. Will we offer bitcoin options? Yes.

So accurately speaking, it is just one of the allocations in our asset portfolio. When I allocate, it means I hold it. But my holding and your holding from the previous era are two different concepts.

Q: What is the appropriate Bitcoin allocation ratio?

Fu Peng: There is no such thing as appropriate. It depends on the strategy of your entire asset portfolio.

For example, the strategy of the newly established fund, New Fire, may focus more on Crypto, so the allocation will be higher. If I am doing traditional FICC, the allocation will be relatively lower. Everyone is just entering the house from the east or the west.

There is no "most suitable" inside. Just like a joke I make, which boyfriend or girlfriend is most suitable for you? The one you feel comfortable with is the most suitable. Everyone is different. There is no absolute allocation ratio, only relative.

Eight, "Ethereum, BNB, essentially, are higher volatility Bitcoins"

Q: How do you view Ethereum then? Many people feel its logic is quite different from Bitcoin.

Fu Peng: Not different. To be precise, it is the "Bitcoin concept" on each chain.

Ethereum, including BNB, is essentially a higher volatility Bitcoin.

If you want normal volatility excess returns, valuation gains, that is Bitcoin; if you want 2 times, 3 times, 5 times, that is Ethereum; if you want 10 times, it is BNB; if you want 100 times, it is Shiba Inu. It's that simple. It is just a difference in volatility because all their sources, the source of faith, are in Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin crashes, rest assured, everything will crash. The problem now is it is not crashing. It fluctuates by 2%, while the other side may be 5%, 10%, 30%, but it is all bi-directional. If it rises on one side, it also rises exponentially; if it falls on one side, it also falls exponentially.

So, in the end, it depends on what you want to achieve. Asset allocation will most likely only include Bitcoin. The rest depends on your risk preference expansion, and you can explore individually. That's the answer.

Nine, "After retailization, you must retailize, this statement is very harsh, but true"

Q: You mentioned that 2026 is the first year. Can it be understood that the crypto market is undergoing institutionalization and de-retailization?

Fu Peng: To be precise, after institutionalization, it is certain that retailization will eventually be removed. In reality, whether it exists or not doesn’t matter. As long as the leverage and volatility are so high, retail investors will be removed sooner or later. This may sound harsh, but it's the truth.

It's like back in China when so many people risked their lives among the green beans and red beans. In the end, how many of the common folks survived? Very few. Only a few big shots. But remember, the real big shots, all of them, after earning their first bucket of gold in the game, quickly professionalized.

Ten, "MSTR's Endgame Is a Bank Stock"

Q: How do you view MSTR as a company?

Fu Peng: Let me think, in the future, when its scale expands to a certain level, it will ultimately transform into a company with predictable income. So, it is more like a bank stock. At some point in the future, its valuation will resemble that of a bank stock.

Of course, it is still in the early growth stage now, with the market size expanding and valuations increasing. This is no different from Carlota Perez's industry lifecycle in traditional finance: early growth, market expansion, valuation expansion. However, once it enters the mature stage, it will undoubtedly become a typical bank stock.

Q: How do you determine when it enters the mature stage?

Fu Peng: According to the industry lifecycle, generally speaking, it starts in the early stage, then valuation and market expansion occur. After a valuation plunge, with only the best companies surviving, they begin the "value section," and when they reach the peak of the value section, that's called the mature stage.

You may not be familiar with MSTR, but you are surely acquainted with NVIDIA.

NVIDIA has now become a "valuable old object." When did it take a valuation hit? In 2022, when Bitcoin dropped to $20,000, NVIDIA plummeted by 70%. That stage was the "early stage" in Perez's framework. People had expectations for its future as an AI computing leader, pushing its valuation to $1 trillion. With liquidity tightening, it had to eliminate the old valuation model (graphics cards), concluding the valuation plunge. With the emergence of ChatGPT, AI being N-card confirmed NVIDIA's status, and NVIDIA redefined the core value of computing power, initiating value growth, reaching $1 trillion, $2 trillion, $3 trillion. When it reached around $3 trillion, the valuation no longer expanded significantly. If you make money, the market cap rises; if you don’t, it doesn't. At this point, the valuation has become a predictable valuation.

What is predictability? When you were in high school, your valuation was "getting into Tsinghua University or Peking University." Once you were admitted to Peking University, it became predictable; people will no longer anticipate whether you will enter Tsinghua or Peking. Now the focus is on how you perform at Peking University.

From 2016 to 2022, NVIDIA has gone through a standard industry lifecycle. Good companies in the U.S. stock market all follow this standard path. Is it easy to analyze U.S. stocks? Very easy. You just need to know which stage the company is in and what kind of factors will affect it. Companies in the growth stage are easily influenced by liquidity and sentiment, while those in the value stage are easily affected by industry and economic cycles. The methodology is just that simple.

For these "hardware companies" in the crypto space, they are currently still in the early stages.

Eleven, "Being Chief Economist at New Fire Is No Different from Before"

Q: After joining New Fire, how is your work as Chief Economist different from your previous role as an economist at a brokerage firm?

Fu Peng: Nothing is different.

Don't be misled by titles and roles. What we have been doing for the past 20 years has been consistent, and what you see is just the surface title. The work underneath has never changed.

It's the same at New Fire today. What I need to do is integrate with New Fire, not change my title, not switch from FICC to being a Creator. No. It's coming to be part of the integration era.

Just like in 2009 and 2010 when I returned to China, my official title was a futures company consultant. Why? Because a large amount of U.S. dollars needed to enter China, either through capital accounts (regulated by the People's Bank of China) or through trade accounts. If it's through trade accounts, I have to deal with commodity traders. So how do I quickly reach these commodity traders? Aren't these traders clients of futures companies?

It's the same with FICC+C. I want to find the giants in Crypto; this is my ability. I can directly reach out to these big players. Let's just integrate. After integration, you learn from FICC, we learn from Crypto, completing the entire structure. There is no difference.

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