New Fire Group CEO Livio Discusses Acquiring Alpha BTC Team, Fu Peng Joining, and "17 AI Employees"

Edit | Wu on Blockchain

On the eve of the Hong Kong Web3 Conference, Wu Editor-in-Chief Colin Wu conversed with Livio Weng, CEO of Xinhuo Group. He detailed the background of the company’s acquisition of Avenir’s Alpha BTC investment team and trading system, as well as the new move of introducing well-known macro analyst Fu Peng as Chief Economist. Xinhuo’s core goal is to build a compliant gateway for crypto trading and asset management focused on institutional clients, high-net-worth individuals, and family offices in Hong Kong and Asia.

The interview mainly highlighted the strategic logic of the Alpha BTC product, which is based on a long-term Bitcoin core holding, generating steady returns by selling low-risk remote options, aiming to achieve lower drawdowns and relatively stable returns under Bitcoin denomination. Xinhuo hopes to create a one-stop service loop covering “account opening — trading — asset management — inheritance,” and plans to continue launching products denominated in Ethereum, U, and other assets in the future.

Meanwhile, Fu Peng’s joining is seen as an important step for Xinhuo to strengthen its macro research and connect with traditional finance, reflecting an accelerating integration of the crypto industry with traditional finance. Livio also shared the company’s practical applications of AI, including using AI staff to improve research, customer service, and operations efficiency, as well as his views on future organizational structure and employment pattern changes.

The guest’s statements represent personal opinions, not Wu’s views, and do not constitute any investment advice. Please strictly follow local laws and regulations. Audio transcription and translation are performed by GPT and may contain errors.

Acquiring Alpha BTC to Enter the Institutional Asset Management Market

Colin: Before the Hong Kong Web3 Conference, Xinhuo Group announced the acquisition of Avenir’s investment team and trading system. Could you talk about the reasons for this acquisition and its potential impact on the listed company?

Livio: We recently completed the acquisition of Avenir’s Alpha BTC investment team and trading system, and have filed with the Securities and Futures Commission. We will launch Hong Kong’s first compliant Bitcoin-denominated asset management service on April 23.

The core of this acquisition aligns with Xinhuo’s new strategic focus on compliant trading and asset management. Currently, Xinhuo’s clients are mainly institutions, family offices, and qualified investors in Hong Kong and Asia. We found that these clients have clear needs for Bitcoin-based allocations and steady returns.

Alpha BTC’s advantage lies in its mature product, with an annualized Bitcoin-based yield of about 5% to 7%, large capacity, and good drawdown control during recent market declines. After comprehensive assessment, we believe this is a highly competitive asset management product in the market.

More importantly, the industry is shifting from retail-dominated to institution-led, with future incremental capital mainly coming from institutions, high-net-worth clients, family offices, and traditional financial institutions. This acquisition aims to integrate a stronger team and product into Xinhuo, promoting Xinhuo as a compliant crypto asset management gateway in Hong Kong and across Asia.

Additionally, since Avenir itself does not hold licenses 1, 4, or 9, external asset management needs will be handled by Xinhuo. Therefore, Xinhuo will also serve as the external asset management gateway for the Li Lin system. This acquisition is just the first step; further institutional market strategies are planned.

The Scarcity and Market Demand for BTC-Denominated Strategies

Colin: Can you further explain the core structure of the BTC-denominated strategy? Besides the team, did you also bring in clients? Currently, are the interested parties mainly institutions, family offices, or miners and other groups?

Livio: The scarcity of BTC-denominated strategies mainly stems from the requirement that managers hold large Bitcoin core positions long-term and have long-term confidence in the industry. Based on this, they can sell remote, low-probability options to generate relatively steady income.

For example, in certain market conditions, if it’s judged that Bitcoin will sharply fall below a certain price or that a short-term sharp rise is unlikely, options can be sold at these remote price ranges to earn income. The prerequisite is that the institution must have a sufficiently large long-term core holding, so not all teams can do this.

Although many quantitative products related to Bitcoin exist, most focus on arbitrage, cross-market strategies, etc., which differ from this long-term core holding-based BTC strategy, making it quite scarce.

Furthermore, this product relies not only on the strategy itself but also on long-term accumulated industry knowledge, market sentiment judgment, and cross-cycle research, technology, operations, and risk control capabilities. These are difficult for ordinary teams to replicate. After over two years of market validation, the product has become quite mature.

From the demand side, the market has long lacked truly trustworthy products offered by licensed institutions and listed companies that are compliant, have long-term operational capacity, and allow clients to hold Bitcoin while earning steady returns. Miners, listed companies holding coins, family offices, and high-net-worth clients preparing to enter but still observing all have clear needs for such products.

Therefore, Xinhuo’s launch of a BTC-denominated asset management product essentially fills a market gap. The future demand for such products is expected to grow steadily as institutions and family offices allocate more to crypto assets.

Going forward, Avenir will focus more on ecosystem development for other institutional-grade products, with subsequent R&D of Alpha BTC led by Xinhuo, forming a synergy.

Alpha BTC’s Scale Goals and Business Loop

Colin: You mainly brought the team and strategy this time. Are there existing external clients transferring over, or are these mostly potential clients?

Livio: Avenir previously managed only proprietary family office funds, with no external clients. The reason Xinhuo acquired it is that Xinhuo is a licensed company holding licenses 1, 4, and 9, providing compliant market services capable of accepting external demand.

Thus, this acquisition itself did not immediately bring in external capital, but it has accumulated a group of potential clients who previously liked this strategy but couldn’t access it compliantly. Based on initial estimates, just from verbal intentions, there’s potential to push Alpha BTC’s AUM beyond $500 million this year, and possibly over $1 billion within two to three years.

Colin: Understood. Does this also connect with your existing private banking services? For example, initially bringing in clients, helping them open accounts and buy coins, then further offering wealth management and asset management to form a complete closed loop?

Livio: Yes. The core capability of private banking is the integrated combination of channels, compliance, trading, and asset management. We provide clients with one-stop services, including account opening, compliant deposits and withdrawals, trade execution, asset allocation, and inheritance planning.

In account opening and trading, we emphasize “accompaniment services.” Currently, Hong Kong institutional accounts typically take one to two months to open, but we can complete it in about three days. Recently, with further AI application, about half of clients can open accounts on the same day.

On the trading side, we also continuously provide analysis and confidence support based on market conditions. After clients complete their allocations, they can further access compliant quantitative and wealth management products, and even extend to other asset allocations and trust inheritance services.

Therefore, Xinhuo’s private banking service itself is a one-stop loop from account opening, trading, to asset management and inheritance. This acquisition further enhances our asset management capacity, deepening our business and creating a new moat.

Currently, this is also Hong Kong’s first compliant Bitcoin-denominated asset management product, precisely meeting the needs of a new wave of institutional clients. On a broader level, it also fills an important asset management gap in Hong Kong’s compliant Web3 ecosystem.

Future Expansion into Ethereum and U Denominated Products

Colin: Will you launch Ethereum-denominated or U-denominated products in the future?

Livio: Yes. After the success of the Bitcoin-denominated product, we are simultaneously developing Ethereum and U-denominated products, expecting to roll out some innovative new products in the second half of this year.

Colin: Is there a possibility that these crypto wealth management products will expand from the institutional market to retail investors, for example through compliant exchanges, offshore exchanges, or even DeFi for broader distribution?

Livio: Industry demand is diverse, but under the licensed framework, the primary principle is to protect retail investors. So currently, we prioritize institutional and qualified high-net-worth investors. If such products are directly aimed at retail, approval and filing processes will be longer and more complex.

Moreover, from Hong Kong’s market perspective, the real growth potential lies with institutional clients. The market has long focused on retail, causing institutional services to lag behind Europe and the US, especially the US.

After Xinhuo redefined its strategy last year, choosing to focus first on the institutional market was because this path has lower costs, shorter cycles, and better fits Hong Kong’s market characteristics. Our goal is to significantly increase client numbers and AUM within two to three years.

This acquisition and product launch are part of ongoing efforts toward this goal. Once we establish a first-mover advantage over a year and a half to two years, it will be very difficult for competitors to catch up. Xinhuo aims to build an institutional crypto asset management gateway in Asia-Pacific first, then expand globally.

We already have a licensed exchange in Japan, and will replicate similar service models in Hong Kong. In markets like Dubai and Singapore, similar service-oriented institutions are still scarce, providing further expansion opportunities.

Fu Peng’s Joining Xinhuo to Strengthen Macro Research and Cross-Industry Integration

Colin: Another topic of interest is the recent addition of Fu Peng, a well-known securities industry figure, to Xinhuo Group. Can you introduce his background, reasons for joining, and future roles?

Livio: Fu Peng is one of the top macro research experts in the Chinese financial circle. Xinhuo’s positioning is to provide leading comprehensive crypto financial services, and a key support for this is having strong research capabilities and market insights.

Inviting Fu Peng as Chief Economist first reflects a trend: the crypto industry is no longer an isolated niche but increasingly integrated into the broader macro financial system. The linkage between crypto markets, US stocks, macro liquidity, and traditional financial risk events is now very clear. So, viewing crypto solely from a “coin circle” perspective is no longer sufficient.

For Xinhuo, as our business scales, our research and investment capabilities need to improve. We must understand markets not only from a crypto asset perspective but also from a macro-financial viewpoint. Because in the future, our client offerings will extend beyond crypto assets to include precious metals, US stocks, and broader asset allocations. This requires a more comprehensive traditional financial research capability.

Xinhuo has always emphasized cross-industry integration. Our rapid progress was due to effectively combining mainland tech talent with Hong Kong’s compliance and financial talent. Bringing in Fu Peng, a traditional financial research expert, further strengthens this capability and helps traditional finance circles better understand and trust the crypto industry.

Colin: That’s quite representative. The main theme now is the integration of traditional finance and Web3. Introducing a renowned traditional finance expert like Fu Peng can also bring more traditional players into Web3. Does his willingness to join Xinhuo indicate his strong interest in this sector?

Livio: Yes. Top financial researchers like Fu Peng usually conduct extensive research before officially joining or publicly expressing opinions. After multiple discussions, we confirmed that his understanding and judgment of crypto are very accurate.

More importantly, his perspective is built on long-term traditional financial research, which many crypto practitioners lack. This makes his understanding of Web3 deeper and more cross-cycle. The recent exchanges have also been very helpful for Xinhuo’s subsequent strategic planning.

How Xinhuo Uses AI to Improve Efficiency and How Ordinary Employees Can Adapt

Colin: Xinhuo has recently mentioned leveraging AI to improve efficiency. In terms of internal management and product development, what experience and progress have you made in AI applications?

Livio: AI has become an unavoidable topic for tech and crypto companies. On one hand, it significantly influences capital flows and market sentiment; on the other, it is reshaping internal talent structures and organizational methods.

For companies, AI’s greatest value is greatly increasing productivity, especially in repetitive and execution-oriented tasks. Currently, we have about 17 AI staff internally, with overall costs far lower than equivalent human resources, and capable of operating 24/7. This is especially effective in night services, data scraping, research organization, and information summarization.

For example, many data collection, organization, and preliminary analysis tasks that previously relied on humans can now be initially handled by AI, with humans only making judgments, adding insights, and improving results. This not only boosts efficiency but also makes information more timely and complete.

We believe that in the future, many companies will optimize their organizational structures similarly. AI will replace much of the repetitive middle-layer work, and organizations will need two types of people: one is high-level, irreplaceable core talent; the other is responsible for offline services and specific execution, still difficult for AI to fully replace.

Of course, this presents both opportunities and challenges. For individuals, the key is to quickly integrate AI into their capabilities, actively learn and use various AI tools, and enhance productivity and competitiveness.

Colin: Many large companies are now using AI to replace some roles. As someone who has both started a business and managed teams long-term, what advice do you have for ordinary employees to avoid being replaced by AI?

Livio: The core is to quickly adapt to this change, making AI part of your work ability rather than opposing it. You should proactively step out of old habits and comfort zones, try new AI products and tools as much as possible.

Besides improving work skills, you can also pay attention to investment opportunities brought by AI. Whether for career development or personal capital allocation, ordinary people should aim to participate in and benefit from this technological revolution rather than passively suffer its impact.