Fu Peng faced a backlash just 5 days after joining XIN HUO. Why is the crypto community tearing him apart?

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 becoming a subject of ridicule.

On April 20, Fu Peng, former chief economist of Northeast Securities, announced he would join Hong Kong-listed company Sinofortune Group as its chief economist. Upon the news, Sinofortune's stock price surged over 12% during intraday trading. Three days after joining the company, Fu Peng appeared at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival and delivered a speech. He stated that the future financial market will move towards the "FICC+C" era, meaning that crypto assets will be incorporated into major asset allocation. Finally, Fu Peng also addressed why he crossed over into the crypto industry: "Because your (crypto) industry has matured to a point where it can be included in an investment portfolio."

The haughty attitude Fu Peng displayed during this speech may have foreshadowed the subsequent 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 was unremarkable, but Fu Peng later added that many people simply don't understand what he's talking about, and only early large-scale BTC holders and those at a certain level would comprehend his meaning.

This self-aggrandizing "if you know, you know" rhetoric irritated the crypto community, leading to a flood of mockery in the comments. A representative example was the meme "Zhao Bei possessed him," implying that Fu Peng's past remarks were just following market trends and lacked real substance (Odaily note: Zhao Bei is a crypto KOL who, as a fund manager, experienced significant losses, completely losing over 20 million RMB worth of ETH, a loss rate of up to 99%).

Surprisingly, in this "tit-for-tat," Fu Peng was the first to crack, blocking all KOLs and crypto practitioners who mocked or joked about him. This behavior of instantly blocking anyone who disagreed thoroughly enraged the crypto community, who then began to fully expose the true nature behind Fu Peng's seemingly glamorous facade.

Fu Peng's "Glamorous" Background

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

Public information shows that Fu Peng's early career was mainly in the UK. He graduated from the University of Reading, worked at Lehman Brothers UK (then the world's fourth-largest investment bank) in 2004, and from 2005 to the end of 2008, he worked at an 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 such as Chief Macroeconomic Advisor/Chief Macro Strategist at institutions like China CIFCO Group and Galaxy Futures.

Fu Peng truly gained widespread public recognition after joining Northeast Securities as its chief economist in 2020. Initially, he mainly served private banking clients, providing wealth allocation advice from a macroeconomic perspective for high-net-worth individuals. In 2024, he successfully broke out of his niche by giving several speeches that diverged from mainstream macroeconomic views, becoming a "celebrity economist." His speeches were clipped into short videos that spread widely and sparked discussions on social media. According to public reports, Fu Peng had over 4 million followers on Weibo alone at the time.

However, this success was short-lived. By the end of 2024, due to persistently publishing bearish views on the Chinese economy and other controversial statements, Fu Peng's accounts on multiple platforms were frozen. At the end of April 2025, Fu Peng stated that he needed surgery and rest for health reasons and subsequently resigned from Northeast Securities.

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

This is just Fu Peng's professional resume. After blocking the crypto KOLs in bulk, his past crypto-related experiences were also brought to light. In 2024, during a paid economic course analyzing gold, he expressed bearish views on Bitcoin and gold. However, when these predictions deviated from actual price performance, he faced numerous demands for refunds.

In 2025, Fu Peng's video series "Fu Peng Says" Season 6 also touched upon the crypto space, promoting paid courses like "BTC: Financial Assets in the AI Era" and "Stablecoins Reconstructing Global Monetary Order," packaged and sold for 1798 RMB. This was right around the time Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $120,000. Currently, the Bitcoin price fluctuates between $75,000 and $80,000.

Fu Peng's paid courses

From his track record, it's clear that Fu Peng is not a traditional academic economist. His identity is more akin to an economic commentator or macro analyst, aiming to guide trading and provide directional forecasts without personally executing trades. After being effectively blacklisted by domestic financial media at the end of 2024, Fu Peng's reputation and credibility plummeted. Even now, his statements cannot be widely circulated on major domestic social media platforms.

So why did Sinofortune invite Fu Peng to be its chief economist?

This traces back to last August when former HashKey Exchange CEO Weng Xiaoqi officially joined Sinofortune as its CEO. A new broom sweeps clean. Upon his arrival, Weng formulated a new strategy for Sinofortune: to become a private banking-grade digital asset manager, serving high-net-worth individuals and institutions, offering a one-stop service from crypto asset allocation to custody.

Under this new strategy, Fu Peng indeed became the most suitable candidate. He can act as a trust intermediary for Sinofortune in the traditional finance field, and based on his past career, he can also bring in targeted client resources.

Sinofortune Group is a company that has evolved through multiple name changes and restructuring from its roots as a "Huobi-system listed platform." While it holds a compliance license, the essence of the private banking business is built on trust. Relying solely on Sinofortune's track record and brand image makes it difficult to earn the trust of traditional family offices and high-net-worth individuals. Therefore, Fu Peng, with his background as a "former chief economist" and a certain level of public recognition in the financial sector, can add a layer of client identification for Sinofortune.

Secondly, as a "celebrity economist," Fu Peng is adept at market translation. He knows how to translate complex, esoteric topics like macroeconomics, asset allocation, and debt cycles for the public and clients, and he knows how to pique the interest of high-net-worth individuals. Finally, Fu Peng's core influence radius likely already covers a group of middle-to-high net worth clients with asset allocation needs. Leveraging his past resource accumulation, Fu Peng can at least improve client reach for Sinofortune's digital asset private banking business.

Why is Fu Peng Struggling in the Crypto Circle?

Every coin has two sides. The conflict between Fu Peng and the crypto community essentially stems from a cultural mismatch between his traditional finance background and the crypto industry.

The convergence of traditional finance and the crypto industry is a phenomenon of the last two years. Before this, and at the dawn of Bitcoin's creation, the two were at odds. The crypto industry questioned the inefficiency and corruption of the traditional financial system, giving rise to its core ethos of anti-authoritarianism, decentralization, and egalitarianism. Although the two fields have now ceased hostilities, this spirit still persists.

Fu Peng, accustomed to the discourse system of traditional finance, has yet to adapt to the public opinion environment of the crypto industry. He is used to one-way communication methods like speeches and private seminars, adopting a didactic posture and intolerant of direct questioning from the audience. He doesn't understand the egalitarian and instant communication style that has always existed in the crypto industry, nor does he realize that even figures like CZ and He Yi sometimes face public scrutiny from the community. Therefore, after being mocked, he resorted to the methods of traditional financial bloggers: blocking and deleting comments, filtering rather than refuting.

Meanwhile, the crypto industry has also changed. In the past, when crypto was still a niche sector, anyone with a bit of fame from traditional finance, entertainment, or regulation who endorsed the industry would be welcomed, and could even ride the hype to profit. Now, with figures like US President Donald Trump and his family, among the most powerful globally, also endorsing crypto and profiting from it, the crypto industry has long been disenchanted with celebrities.

Today's crypto industry cares more about what you can bring, not who you are. Fu Peng, an economist in name but essentially an analyst who pontificates without holding positions, is evidently an unpopular figure in the crypto industry.

In reality, Fu Peng has only one foot in the crypto door. He still uses his traditional financial analysis framework to analyze crypto, serves his traditional finance clients, and only recognizes the intersection between crypto and traditional finance. A wall still separates him from the authentic crypto community. The two sides look down on each other, but Fu Peng probably doesn't care, as we are not his target clients.

Latest Developments

According to crypto KOL Biquan Laosiji, Fu Peng explained that his Twitter account is not managed by himself but is outsourced to a team. He claimed to be completely unaware of the mass blocking of crypto KOLs. This once again highlights the distance between Fu Peng, from a traditional finance background, and the crypto industry. He doesn't want to communicate directly with the crypto community. Of course, this could also just be Fu Peng's attempt to deflect blame, perhaps trying to distance himself from other issues on his account.