入职新火5天就翻车，付鹏为何被加密社区喷成筛子？

Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Golem (@web3_golem)

It took Fu Peng only five days to go from officially announcing his entry into the crypto industry to being widely ridiculed.

On April 20, Fu Peng, former Chief Economist of Northeast Securities, announced he was joining Hong Kong-listed company Sinofortune Group as Chief Economist. The news sent Sinofortune's stock price surging over 12% intraday. Three days after joining, Fu Peng appeared at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival and delivered a speech. In his speech, he proposed that the future financial market will move towards the "FICC+C" era, where traditional asset allocation will include crypto assets. Finally, Fu Peng explained why he crossed over to join the crypto industry: "Because this (crypto) industry of yours has matured to a point where it can be included in investment portfolios."

The condescending tone Fu Peng displayed in this speech may have foreshadowed the conflict with crypto KOLs. On April 25, Fu Peng posted that the funding rate for Bitcoin perpetual contracts is similar to the deferred fees in traditional gold spot trading. This statement itself was unremarkable, but Fu Peng added that many people simply didn't understand what he was talking about, and only early large-scale BTC holders and those at a certain level would get his point.

This self-important, "if you know, you know" attitude stirred resentment in the crypto community. The comments section was flooded with mockery of Fu Peng. The most representative jab was the meme "Zhao Bei possessed him," implying that Fu Peng's past calls to buy high and sell low demonstrated no real skill (Odaily note: Zhao Bei is a crypto KOL who, as a fund manager, suffered massive losses, losing over 20 million RMB worth of ETH in one go, a loss of 99%).

Surprisingly, it was Fu Peng who lost his cool first in this exchange of hostilities. He mass-blocked all the KOLs and crypto practitioners who mocked or made fun of him. This behavior of blocking at the slightest disagreement completely infuriated the crypto community, which then thoroughly exposed the real person behind Fu Peng's glamorous facade.

Fu Peng's "Glamorous" Background

Who is Fu Peng? Native crypto players might not be familiar with him, but users who regularly follow macroeconomics and major asset class topics will certainly recognize the name.

Public information shows that Fu Peng's early career was mainly in the UK. He graduated from the University of Reading and worked at Lehman Brothers (then the world's fourth-largest investment bank) in 2004. From 2005 to the end of 2008, he worked at an event-driven strategy fund under Solomon International Investment Group, serving as Head of Global Macro Hedge Strategy Design for international financial markets. After returning to China in 2008, he held positions such as Chief Macroeconomic Advisor/Chief Macro-related roles at institutions like China CIFCO Group and Galaxy Futures.

Fu Peng truly became widely known to the public after joining Northeast Securities as Chief Economist in 2020. Initially, he served private banking clients, providing wealth allocation advice from a macroeconomic perspective for high-net-worth individuals. In 2024, he successfully broke through to a wider audience with several speeches that diverged from mainstream macroeconomic views, becoming an "internet celebrity economist." Clips of his speeches were widely shared as short videos on social media, sparking discussion. According to public reports, at that time, Fu Peng had over 4 million followers on Weibo alone.

But this didn't last long. By the end of 2024, due to his long-standing bearish views on the Chinese economy and controversial statements, Fu Peng had his accounts frozen on multiple platforms. At the end of April 2025, Fu Peng stated that he needed surgery and rest for health reasons, leading to his resignation from Northeast Securities.

A community summary of some of Fu Peng's past statements

This is just Fu Peng's professional resume. After his mass-blocking of crypto KOLs, his past dealings with crypto were also dug up. In 2024, during a paid economics course on gold analysis, Fu Peng expressed bearish views on both Bitcoin and gold. However, because his predictions diverged from actual price performance, he faced multiple demands for refunds.

In 2025, Fu Peng's video series course "Fu Peng Says" Season 6 also touched on the crypto space, promoting paid courses like "BTC: The Financial Asset of the AI Era" and "Stablecoins Reconstructing Global Monetary Order," sold as a package for 1,798 RMB. This was just when Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $120,000; it now fluctuates between $75,000 and $80,000.

Fu Peng's paid courses

From the above, it's clear that Fu Peng is not a traditional academic economist. His identity is more like an economic commentator or macro analyst, aiming to guide trading by offering directional predictions without actually trading himself. After being collectively blacklisted by domestic financial media at the end of 2024, Fu Peng's reputation and credibility have plummeted. Even now, his comments cannot be disseminated on major domestic social media platforms.

So why did Sinofortune still hire Fu Peng as Chief Economist?

This goes back to August last year, when former HashKey Exchange CEO Weng Xiaoqi officially joined Sinofortune as CEO. A new broom sweeps clean. Upon taking office, Weng formulated a new strategy for Sinofortune: to become a private banking-level digital asset steward, serving high-net-worth individuals and institutions, offering one-stop services from crypto asset allocation to custody.

Under this new strategy, Fu Peng was indeed the most suitable candidate. He could act as a trust intermediary for Sinofortune in the traditional finance realm and, based on his past career, bring in relevant client resources.

The Sinofortune Group is a company that evolved from a "Huobi ecosystem listed platform" through multiple name changes and streamlining. Although it has obtained compliance licenses, private banking business fundamentally sells trust. It would be difficult for Sinofortune, relying solely on its own track record and brand image, to gain the trust of traditional family offices and high-net-worth individuals. Therefore, Fu Peng, with his background as a "sell-side Chief Economist" and a certain level of public recognition in the financial field, could add a layer of customer identification for Sinofortune.

Secondly, as an "internet celebrity economist," Fu Peng possesses strong market translation skills. He knows how to translate esoteric and complex topics like macroeconomics, asset classes, and debt cycles for the public and clients, and how to pique the interest of high-net-worth individuals. Finally, Fu Peng's core sphere of influence likely already covers a group of mid-to-high-net-worth clients with asset allocation needs. Leveraging his past resource accumulation, Fu Peng could at least improve customer reach for Sinofortune's digital asset private banking business.

Why is Fu Peng a Bad Fit for the Crypto Circle?

The same knife cuts bread and fingers. The conflict between Fu Peng and the crypto community fundamentally stems from the clash between his traditional finance background and the crypto industry's culture.

The integration of traditional finance and the crypto industry is a phenomenon of the last two years. Before that, and since Bitcoin's inception, the two were fundamentally at odds. The crypto industry questioned the inefficiency and decay of the traditional financial system, giving rise to an original ethos of anti-authoritarianism, decentralization, and equality. Although the two fields have now called a truce, this spirit still persists.

Fu Peng, accustomed to the discourse system of traditional finance, hasn't adapted to the online environment of the crypto industry. He is used to one-way communication like speeches and private seminars, adopting a lecturing posture intolerant of direct questions from the audience. He fails to understand the crypto industry's long-standing culture of equal, real-time communication, not realizing that even CZ and He Yi sometimes face public scrutiny from the community. So, when ridiculed by the community, he resorted to the tactics of traditional financial bloggers – blocking and deleting comments, opting to filter rather than refute.

At the same time, the crypto industry has changed. When crypto was still a niche, any slightly famous figure from traditional finance, entertainment, or regulation who endorsed crypto would be welcomed, even able to capitalize on the hype. But now that one of the world's most powerful figures – US President Donald Trump and his family – also endorses and profits from crypto, the industry has become disillusioned with celebrities.

Today's crypto industry cares more about what you can bring, not who you are. Fu Peng's image – an economist on the surface but essentially an armchair analyst who doesn't hold positions and only talks – is clearly not appealing to the crypto community.

In reality, Fu Peng has only one foot in the crypto industry. He still uses his traditional financial analysis framework, still serves traditional finance clients, and only recognizes the part where crypto and traditional finance intersect. A wall separates him from the real crypto community; the two sides look down on each other. But Fu Peng probably doesn't care, because none of us are his target clients.

Latest Developments

According to crypto KOL 币圈老司机, Fu Peng explained that his Twitter account is not managed by himself but outsourced to a team, and he was completely unaware of the mass-blocking of crypto KOLs. This once again highlights the distance between Fu Peng, with his traditional finance background, and the crypto industry. He doesn't want direct communication with the crypto community. Of course, this could just be a convenient excuse for him to shift the blame, perhaps trying to distance himself from the matter of following certain accounts.