Fu Peng's first public speech in 2026: What exactly are crypto assets? Why did I join the crypto asset industry?

Speaker: Pu Peng, Chief Economist of New Fire Group
Editor: Eric, Foresight News

On April 23, Beijing time, at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival hosted at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Pu Peng, who recently took office as Chief Economist of New Fire Group and is a well-known domestic macroeconomist, delivered his first public speech of 2026. In this speech, Pu Peng publicly explained his understanding of crypto assets for the first time, as well as his interpretation of the current macroeconomic environment and the position of crypto assets within it.

I have organized all the content of Pu Peng’s speech, with some edits.

Many people have been asking me frantically these days, why I have become so close to the crypto and digital asset circles. Actually, this connection should have started around 2022, so it’s been about four years now.

When I was in traditional finance, I was also closely monitoring and tracking the trends in the crypto asset market. Of course, today I am giving this speech here, and it’s quite simple—I’m just telling a story from history. Because for me, I am actually one of the main beneficiaries of the last era’s dividends. So you might think that my title is Economist, but in fact I am not a scholar. The core experience of my past 25 years, what I have been doing, is essentially what everyone understands as a traditional hedge fund.

You might want to ask, why are these traditional capital and financial sector people or funds starting to pay attention to crypto assets?

Over the past year or so, I’ve been saying that the future will definitely be “FICC + C”, meaning that asset allocation will include crypto assets. Many people want to know why, so I’ll take this opportunity to briefly share with you. If you understand this, then you probably already have the answer in your mind about how the market works, how asset prices move, etc. So today I’ll help you break through that mental barrier.

This timeline should be traced back to the origins of the FICC asset class. When was that? Around the late 1970s to early 1980s. In fact, over the past decade, everyone here has been able to clearly recognize that the entire global framework and pattern are undergoing huge changes, and these changes are most similar to the time after World War II—specifically the 1970s and 1980s.

For example, I just saw that General Xiao Feng also mentioned artificial intelligence, and many of the guests will talk about AI integration. As a major technological advancement and productivity boost, each wave of technological progress and productivity improvement reshapes all industries. These industries include all kinds of business models, and of course, they inevitably include the financial sector. Our finance is not static; it is constantly evolving.

Look at movies or TV shows like The Big Short or The Wolf of Wall Street—the finance depicted there is about traders in the trading floor shouting orders in vests, or at the NYSE, where many still think finance is about quoting and trading on the trading floor. Of course, many journalists like to use this scene of on-floor trading as the background for their reports.

If you go to Chicago to see the earliest interest rate derivatives markets, or to the London Metal Exchange (LME), you will still see traces of this history. Yes, that is the most traditional finance, the finance before the 1960s and 1970s. Traders in vests quoting prices, completing transactions with typewriters and punch cards. For Chinese speakers or most Chinese people, the impression of trading is in stock exchanges, watching the so-called ticker tape, filling out orders, and passing them to the counter, with young women using dedicated phone lines to complete transactions.

Not all finance or trading remains in that era; the biggest change in finance has always been driven by technological progress.

In the last cycle of technological advancement, centered around semiconductors, computers, personal computers, DOS systems, Windows, etc., this technological progress reconstructed new forms of finance in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Today’s familiar major asset classes—interest rates, commodities, exchange rates, stocks—are essentially a fusion of these financial assets.

The birth of FICC happened in the early 1980s. Around the 1970s, the pricing of financial derivatives, such as options and the Black-Scholes model, was something you learned in school. But imagine, without the large-scale application and popularization of computers, how could you quote or price a financial derivative or asset in just ten, twenty, or thirty minutes? How could you complete quoting and trading?

Starting in 1985, professional investors and institutional investors began using Bloomberg terminals. I started using Reuters 3000 in 1997 or 1998, during the Asian financial crisis, followed by Reuters Xtra and later Eikon. In other words, the era of computers, semiconductors, information technology, and data created the foundation for later FICC.

We now have asset classes, fusion among assets, cross-asset trading, hedge funds, algorithmic trading, and well-known products like ETFs. Without this technological progress, finance would still be stuck in the era where traders in vests shouting orders was the norm.

JPMorgan on Wall Street became the leader in financial derivatives. At that time, JPMorgan hired Cambridge graduate Blythe Masters, who became a key figure in establishing the derivatives market and transforming FICC into the most profitable part of Wall Street’s mainstream finance. Of course, this was closely related to the turbulence of the 1970s and 1980s. Remember, the origin of technological progress is also the origin of global upheaval.

Thus, technological progress at some stage coexists with upheavals in the world order. During the 1970s and 1980s, we experienced the Cold War, Middle East conflicts, the dollar’s oil crisis, and the surge in gold prices, along with systemic decoupling. But human civilization always moves forward amid opportunities and risks.

While the world order was chaotic, our computers, semiconductors, and information technology were rising. I once joked that at that time, there was a strange investment portfolio—investing simultaneously in “humanity’s future” and “humanity’s no future.”

Think about it: over the past decade or so, since around 2019, you can look at whether your assets are “humanity’s future” or “no future,” and see that both are hard to hold today. Today, as we all realize that AI, data, and computing power will become the most important productivity of the next era, the game is already more than halfway through.

The first half was what everyone in the traditional crypto circle perceives. Why do I talk about this? Because nothing is static; everything is constantly being reconstructed and reborn during development.

So I once said that it’s very possible that my entry into this circle might leave an important mark in history—just like Blythe Masters’ entry into JPMorgan, which could be a significant milestone.

This milestone signals the end of the early development stage of the past 10 to 15 years and the arrival of a new phase. In these two stages, investors, participants, market systems, and rules of the game will undergo huge changes—or are already changing. As I told reporters earlier, many paradigms you’ve been familiar with over the past 10 or 15 years may undergo drastic shifts. Of course, if you have enough experience in traditional finance, you already know what’s coming. Just like in China’s past, where large provincial financial bureaus established exchanges and many financial assets existed, but as regulation strengthened, the market naturally weeded out the weaker.

Financial derivatives will gradually be incorporated into the asset portfolios of financial institutions, and crypto assets have undergone the same process. Today, everyone is used to commodities, but before the 1980s, financial derivatives for commodities were not widespread, and most people couldn’t trade them meaningfully. Copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, palm oil—these assets weren’t traded with derivatives back then; now, trading exchange rates, interest rate futures, and ETFs is commonplace. It’s similar to the feeling in 2009, when stock index futures, options, and derivatives first appeared.

If you understand this, you’ll see it’s the same timeline. The technological progress then drove the transformation and integration of traditional finance into FICC, and today, the same logic applies: data, computing power, AI, and underlying technologies—namely encryption or blockchain—are reconstructing finance. Our finance is changing.

We’ve been paying attention all along, but honestly, we wouldn’t participate—completely not. I joke that early on, it’s about faith, about fundamentalism, right? Believing in something. But true capital doesn’t over-participate in faith-based speculation early on.

Crypto assets only become part of asset management frameworks after they grow and gain certainty. For example, if we traded red beans and green beans, would large financial institutions include them in asset allocation? Impossible. But today, we can turn copper into futures, options, ETFs, and include it in portfolios.

This shift reflects the evolving ecosystem of the crypto world. 2022 was the first time I truly engaged with some big figures in this circle. The connection started in 2021, when I gave an interview. Bitcoin was around $70k then, but I was straightforward: based on our framework, we simply couldn’t understand what this asset really was.

Because all the faith-based narratives you talk about, we don’t accept them. We interpret it through our own lens—like its function of value preservation, which we analyze with our own framework and language.

In that interview, I said I thought we didn’t have the time—or maybe it wasn’t the right time—to get involved. But I said we were observing, and I wasn’t fully clear on the model or understanding of it (crypto assets). However, I had a feeling: at that time, the US CFTC had already classified it as a commodity, a tradable financial asset. For me, I could simply use this definition to understand its nature.

I said something like, I’d guess that if liquidity tightens significantly in 2022, then in our traditional asset circle, I could easily see valuation assets experiencing a large-scale devaluation. If my understanding is correct, then the valuation devaluation of crypto assets would follow the same pattern. I guessed that Bitcoin might drop by half—that’s why, at the end of 2022, when it fell to around $20k, many in the crypto circle contacted me, realizing perhaps the times had changed.

Of course, after years of exchanges, I see that many of the true big players in the crypto world are just like the big players in traditional finance back in the day. Early on, everyone was rough and bold. Think about the big traders in China’s commodity futures markets—weren’t they all rough and ready to take risks? It’s about seizing opportunities, turning a bicycle into a motorcycle. But those who can truly succeed in the future are the ones who, when the time comes, don’t just shift—they make a decisive turn, quickly absorbing and completing the transition.

If you stick to old experiences, you’ll be gradually phased out by the times. My personal view is that 2025 and 2026 might be the key years for crypto assets.

Tell me what you think crypto assets are, and I’ll also incorporate my understanding from traditional finance to deepen the interpretation. After a few years of integration and acceptance, a new system has already formed.

And over these years, including last year, from our perspective, it’s about valuation compression caused by a new round of liquidity tightening. The crypto circle is experiencing the same story. What does that tell us? That we are on the right path. This inclusion and integration will eventually lead to a state where there’s no distinction—just like in the 1970s and 1980s, with traditional stock traders and large asset managers.

So in the future, it will definitely be “FICC + C”, with no more sharp divisions between “you” and “me.” Of course, another crucial point for us is compliance. 2025 is an important starting point. Whether it’s the stablecoin legislation or the laws clarifying the legal status of digital and crypto assets, these two major laws have already given us the answer. In the future, you’ll see Wall Street financial institutions rapidly entering this market. Just like diversifying foreign exchange reserves, they will incorporate crypto assets into their diversified asset holdings.

Crypto assets will shift from being a single reserve or trading asset to a diversified trading asset. Back then, I could include commodities, exchange rates, and interest rates; today, I can include crypto assets. But remember, as they merge, the market logic will declare the arrival of a new era, replacing old habits. Also, after the 1980s, the proportion of retail investors in the US stock market gradually declined, while institutional participation increased. The same will happen in any market.

From early stages to maturity, this is an inevitable process. Is it happening now? My answer is yes. Stablecoins have separated blockchain payment functions, so think about what Bitcoin really is. A reporter asked me if it’s “digital gold,” and I said that’s somewhat controversial. Why?

Because it depends on the individual. For me, I might immediately understand what you’re talking about. But for ordinary investors, their first reaction might be “gold.” So what is gold? It’s a tradable commodity that maintains value—a complete definition. Some assets serve the function of value preservation, but they may not have the capacity for large-scale financialization or trading.

For example, what about your son’s AJ basketball shoes? Do they have value? Many people have a huge bias about value. For instance, do collectible figurines have value? Does a Richard Mille watch have value? The first point: if it’s a broad concept of value, then no problem—emotional value, companionship value, are all value. But whether it can be financially traded on a large scale is another matter.

And what about logs, walnuts, or orchids? Do they have value? Some might say no, but if the definition is broad, then they do. If the assets are to be financially tradable, then no—because they aren’t. A complete definition of any asset is very important.

Crypto assets now have a very clear standard definition. The development of Western society follows a clear path: if it’s not prohibited, it’s encouraged—encouraging innovation and exploration. Just like our financial derivatives in the past. When clients demand options or swaps but there’s no market or regulation, we just do it. Once done, compliance layers are added step by step, allowing it to mature gradually. Western finance is about financial innovation, compliance, and finally reaching maturity.

Crypto assets follow the same logic. Now, the question is: by 2025, will the regulatory framework be certain? My answer is: yes. So in the future, you’ll see stablecoins applying blockchain payment functions. What about Bitcoin? It will become an asset with value preservation and financialized trading functions—that’s its full significance. I know this definition might upset fundamentalists of the old era.

But I want to tell you, that’s just the era. It’s unavoidable. It’s a logical framework. At this point, Wall Street can fully participate, and a new chapter is about to begin.

I don’t know if today’s speech will be recorded in history, but I hope it will. I hope it sparks some reflection. I believe this speech can also answer many questions people want to ask: “Pu, an old-timer in FICC, why are you entering such a new industry?” I want to say, crypto assets have already matured to the point of being included in investment portfolios.

That’s all I wanted to share. Thank you.