New Huobi Chief Economist Fu Peng: The macro bear market is expected to end this year; prioritize allocating to value-oriented assets.

Interview: Presley, PANews

整理：Nancy, PANews

One year after leaving Northeast Securities, well-known economist Fu Peng has new developments. As a prominent mainland internet celebrity economist, Fu Peng is highly recognized and influential for his macro insights and straightforward style. Recently, Hong Kong-listed company New Fire Group officially announced that Fu Peng has joined the company as Chief Economist. This crossover move into the digital asset field has quickly attracted widespread market attention and discussion.

On April 23, Fu Peng delivered his first public speech after joining at the Bitfire Day · 2026 Hong Kong Institutional Digital Wealth Management Summit. Afterwards, he was interviewed by multiple media outlets including PANews, sharing his reasons for entering the crypto asset field and his thoughts on future financial trends.

Fu Peng pointed out that we are currently in the second major integration of finance and technology. A new wave of technological innovation centered on AI, data, and computing power is driving crypto assets toward a new era of institutionalization, compliance, and financialization.

The new fusion of finance and technology, FICC+C, is an inevitable choice

As a veteran in the traditional FICC field, Fu Peng believes that the finance sector is experiencing a new major integration, entering a new situation of FICC+C, where the final C stands for Crypto. He hopes his role in this process can be as milestone-making as Morgan’s Bryce Mastes’ push for FICC (fixed income, foreign exchange, commodities) development back in the day.

Fu Peng pointed out that finance has never been static but evolves with technological progress. Historically, the broad asset class trading of FICC truly emerged in the 1970s-80s, alongside the computer and information technology revolution. Wall Street began integrating commodities, exchange rates, bonds, stocks, and other assets, leading to the creation of derivatives pricing, futures, options, and interest rate swaps, gradually becoming core profit sources for mainstream financial institutions.

Today’s crypto assets are essentially a new asset class born alongside a new wave of technological progress. This wave centers on AI, data, and computing power, with Bitcoin mining itself being a direct reflection of computing power— a natural result of this era’s productivity revolution. Sooner or later, these assets will be systematically incorporated into institutional investment portfolios, just like FICC was in the past.

Fu Peng further pointed out that the US’s GENIUS Act and Clarity Act essentially mark the conclusion of regulatory clarifications over the past decade, with the most accurate classification being digital assets. Among these, regulations related to stablecoins will separate payment and monetary attributes, making related assets clearer as financial instruments with value storage and tradability. This signals that traditional financial institutions can truly enter the market on a large scale and in compliance.

In his view, this process is very similar to that of the 1970s-80s. Back then, the main trading venues shifted from NYSE to NASDAQ, with a large portion of trading done via computer terminals, with speeds jumping from minutes to seconds, milliseconds, and potentially future tick-levels. Technology not only changed trading methods but also restructured the entire financial landscape. 2025 can be seen as the second major integration of finance and technology after World War II, driven by computing power, data, and AI, underpinned by blockchain and cryptography, reconstructing new production relations.

Therefore, the understanding of the crypto world must be entirely different from the past decade. The early stage was characterized by wild growth and faith-driven development, but now we are entering a mature phase of institutionalization, regulation, and financialization. “FICC + C” (traditional major assets plus crypto assets) is not just a simple crossover but an inevitable choice aligned with this historical trend.

RWA is just a tool; there are differences in financial innovation between the East and West

Regarding the current RWA (Real-World Asset) craze, Fu Peng believes that RWA is essentially just a tool, not an independent asset class. Like options, swaps, and forwards—derivatives—its core is asset securitization, just moved onto the blockchain.

It can be understood as on-chain securitization of real-world assets, or conversely, as securitization of crypto assets. Just as in the early days of stock markets, which could only go long, derivatives like short-selling, stock options, swaps, and forwards were gradually introduced, RWA can be layered on any asset to provide more financial functions.

Fu Peng emphasized that blockchain technology itself is also a tool, widely applicable in scenarios like trade document anti-counterfeiting. Ultimately, these technological tools will give rise to new asset forms and applications, but RWA itself should not be simply hyped as a new independent asset.

On attracting international capital, Fu Peng believes that sectors like RWA and related crypto areas are unlikely to be the main drivers for Hong Kong to attract large amounts of overseas funds. From a civilizational logic, Asia tends to be more conservative in financial innovation. Western maritime civilization operates on “where there is no prohibition, there is permission,” encouraging bold exploration and pioneering, exposing issues during practice, then gradually regulating. This is “innovate first, regulate later.” East Asian civilization prefers “avoid poor quality, avoid rushing,” waiting until others have fully validated the path and risks before cautiously following.

In fact, East Asia’s FICC business only started around 2009, because it needed to wait for Western markets to be fully validated before large-scale promotion. Hong Kong, as a bridge between East and West, is relatively more open than mainland China but still in an intermediate state—seeking efficiency and opportunity while ensuring fairness and risk control, often balancing cautiously between the two.

Of course, stablecoins are a must. Fu Peng believes that not doing them could leave one behind in the next financial era. But at the same time, it cannot be fully handed over to the private sector, so policies often need to balance innovation and risk control. As for the digital yuan stablecoin, he believes it will eventually arrive but will take a long time. It will wait until external risks are exposed and the pitfalls are mostly explored before proceeding cautiously at its own pace.

The macro bear market may end this year; prioritize AI stocks

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

Fu Peng believes that once crypto assets are officially integrated into the traditional financial system as a standard asset class, they will resonate strongly with the financial framework built over the past 40 years, greatly increasing correlation, and their trading logic will gradually merge with traditional financial assets.

In the past, the crypto market was more like early Hong Kong or A-shares, driven mainly by circulating chips, large investors’ holdings, and market makers, rather than macroeconomics. Investors mainly focused on how many chips a certain address or wallet held, who was selling, who was sniping, without needing to analyze macro liquidity deeply. This was typical of the early crypto scene, which lacked large institutional participation.

Now, this situation has changed. As institutionalization increases, large crypto assets’ performance is becoming more similar to mature markets. For example, giants like Alibaba and Tencent are now unlikely to be manipulated solely by chips as in early days. At this point, macroeconomics and liquidity start to become important factors because they directly influence large asset allocations of institutions, which then transmit to crypto assets.

Fu Peng pointed out that this resonance has already appeared. The linkage between AI concept stocks (like Nvidia) and crypto assets is becoming obvious, and the liquidity squeeze in traditional markets affecting valuations is having a tangible impact on crypto.

Regarding the current market environment, Fu Peng analyzed that since November last year, the Fed’s balance sheet reduction has tightened overall liquidity. While many focus on rate cuts, many overlook that liquidity is not just about interest rates but also about the money supply. When balance sheet reduction causes liquidity squeeze that exceeds the stimulative effect of rate cuts, the entire market’s liquidity is effectively tightening. In this environment, all high-valuation assets will be under pressure first. This logic is common in traditional assets, and over the past six or seven years, crypto assets have also been significantly affected, indicating that the link between crypto and traditional finance is deepening.

For the current bear cycle, Fu Peng estimates it may last until the end of this year. He believes that such macro-driven adjustments do not require overly precise predictions; taking it step by step is enough. When macro liquidity becomes the dominant factor, timing signals will naturally become clearer.

Regarding the four-year cycle theory of Bitcoin, Fu Peng explicitly states it is no longer applicable; that was a product of the previous era. As crypto assets enter an institutionalized asset management phase, the influence of large investors on prices diminishes, and market volatility will gradually decrease.

He emphasizes that predicting prices for any asset is unwise. Commodities can be referenced by cost lines, stocks by corporate earnings, but current Bitcoin, while a store of value, lacks the traditional “molecular” value. It is more like a purely valuation-driven, value-maintaining tradable financial asset, which is also the most standard US regulatory definition.

Bitcoin’s supply has a hard cap, unlike traditional commodities affected by miner costs and extraction pace, or stocks that can expand through IPOs. This scarcity is an advantage but also limits its maximum proportion in global asset allocation, preventing it from being increased arbitrarily like stocks or commodities.

In asset allocation, Fu Peng offers advice: for more stable value assets, prioritize AI stocks; Bitcoin is intermediate—more certain among crypto assets but unlikely to occupy a large proportion like traditional major assets. If one wants to amplify volatility, Ethereum is an option.