How a traditional macro analyst navigates changes in consumption and assets to enter the Web3 arena. Author: Changan. Who is Fu Peng, the man who blocked a host of Chinese-speaking KOLs? Many people first noticed him not because of a speech or a report, but because of controversy on social media: some Chinese-speaking professionals and KOLs discovered they had been blocked by him. In April 2026, Fu Peng appeared on stage at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival as the chief economist of Newfire Group. For many who have long focused on traditional macroeconomics and asset allocation, this name is familiar; but for Web3 users, the questions are just beginning: Who is Fu Peng? Why did he step onto the Web3 stage at this particular time? I. Who is he: Twenty years from Lehman Brothers to Northeast Securities Public accounts of Fu Peng's early background are not entirely consistent. What is certain is that what changed his life trajectory was a recommendation in 2000: Xue Wenshi, then chairman of the Northwest China Securities Regulatory Commission, sent this young man to the UK. First stop: London, 1999-2004. Upon arriving in the UK, Fu Peng enrolled at the ISMA School of the University of Reading, majoring in International Securities Investment and Banking. ISMA was then a top European international securities market research institution, specializing in training analysts to directly serve the capital markets. There was an interesting anecdote during his studies: Fu Peng encountered some trading opportunities based on information asymmetry and even attempted to find arbitrage opportunities. He later repeatedly mentioned this experience as a starting point for his business acumen. Second stop: Lehman Brothers, 2004-2005. In 2004, on the recommendation of ISMA Chairman Brian Scott-Quinn, Fu Peng successfully joined Lehman Brothers in the UK. During his time at Lehman, he systematically gained exposure to the actual operations of investment banks, developed a genuine awareness of risk control, and understood how institutional capital thinks and places bets. He only worked at Lehman for about a year before moving to Salomon Brothers International Investment Group in the City of London in 2005. Third stop: Salomon Brothers, 2005-2008, and the crisis. After moving to Salomon Brothers International Investment Group in the City of London, Fu Peng became the Global Head of Macro Hedge Strategy Design for event-driven strategy funds, responsible for the interconnected analysis of financial derivatives, currency, and commodity markets. In his later retrospective, he noted some unusual signals emerging in overseas markets around 2006, such as the expansion of high-risk mortgages. In September of the same year, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the financial crisis fully erupted. He witnessed all of this firsthand and gleaned from it something he would later repeatedly mention: positive feedback cannot last forever, nor can negative feedback.Fourth Stop: Returning to China, 2008-2011 – Years of Exploration. In November 2008, Fu Peng returned to China, becoming the Deputy General Manager of Shandong High-Tech Venture Capital Co., Ltd. In August 2009, he transferred to Zhongqi Group as Chief Macro Strategy Analyst. This was his first public appearance in China as a chief analyst. During those years, he was doing something more crucial: starting with the foreign exchange market, using commodities as a medium, he gradually connected various assets in the actual operation of cross-border capital flows, forming his own analytical system. In 2011, he moved to Galaxy Futures, beginning to appear in the media as a special commentator. Fifth Stop: Hedge Fund, 2017-2019 – Back to the Buy-Side. From August 2017 to November 2019, Fu Peng served as a director of Hangzhou Hedge Fund. This is an often overlooked stage in his career: he returned to the buy-side from a sell-side analyst position, managing money and asset allocation. This experience later earned him the title of "chief economist who understands the buy-side best." He knew what real institutional investors were thinking, what they needed, and where they were constrained—a fundamental difference from most sell-side economists who had never managed money. Sixth stop: Northeast Securities, 2020-2025, becoming a public figure. At the end of 2019, Li Guanying, director of the Northeast Securities Research Institute, extended an invitation to Fu Peng. In February 2020, Northeast Securities officially announced his appointment as chief economist. This timing coincided with the outbreak of the pandemic, causing severe global market volatility and a surge in demand for macroeconomic analysis. His style of expression was drastically different from most securities firm economists. From never writing scripts to speaking openly in front of the camera, he accumulated a large audience of ordinary people through down-to-earth language and the unique humor of northerners. In March 2024, he published "Witnessing the Counter-Tide: Reflections on the Major Shift in Global Asset Logic." Later that year, he underwent two major surgeries, leaving a message on his WeChat Moments: "Had two general anesthesia surgeries in two days; will take good care of myself from now on." On April 30, 2025, Fu Peng officially resigned from Northeast Securities due to health reasons, and his employment information was subsequently removed from the official website of the Securities Association of China. Seventh stop: Xinhuo Group. In April 2026, just before the opening of the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Fu Peng appeared at the conference as the chief economist of Xinhuo Group. II. What he said: Several verified judgments. He made many public statements; here we only select a few with clear timelines, relatively clear viewpoints, and subsequent market performance to compare. 1️⃣ September 2024, Phoenix Bay Area Financial Forum. Fu Peng publicly stated: One of the core problems facing the current economic operation is insufficient effective demand and declining investment returns.The continued decline in interest rates reflects a downward shift in the overall rate of return across society; rising household savings propensity and more intense price competition faced by businesses in the context of insufficient demand create a negative feedback loop. Regarding real estate, he believes that in the long run, the financial attributes of some housing units may weaken, becoming more closely associated with consumption. Looking at future trends: the 10-year Treasury yield continued its downward trend at the end of 2024, and his judgment on "declining returns" is largely consistent with market performance in terms of direction. 2️⃣ November 24, 2024, HSBC closed-door meeting. The speech was titled "2024 Review and 2025 Outlook – Hedging Risks vs. Soft Landing." He pointed out that some structural problems in the Chinese economy had already begun to emerge before the pandemic and have not been fully resolved in recent years. Changes in household income expectations, balance sheets, and employment structure will all affect consumption and economic performance. He discussed the Chinese issues within a more macro framework, proposing an analytical path: ideology → policy choice → economic structure → asset pricing. The content of the closed-door meeting was leaked and quickly spread on social media. According to public media reports, Fu Peng's short video platform account was blocked after the meeting. 3️⃣ November 28, 2025, Bloomberg Businessweek The Year Ahead 2026 Summit. Fu Peng discussed the relationship between productivity and institutions, pointing out that there is a mismatch between current productivity progress (such as AI technology) and the matching of production relations and institutions. In terms of asset allocation, he mentioned a similar idea of "structural allocation," such as technology assets representing future productivity on one end and assets with stable cash flow characteristics on the other. Looking at the subsequent trend: during 2025-2026, gold prices generally maintained a strong performance and reached new highs, which has a certain explanatory power for the structural driving direction of gold. 4️⃣ December 20, 2025, Alpha Summit. He pointed out that a core issue in the current AI industry is that while infrastructure construction is relatively sufficient, downstream applications and commercialization still need to be verified. The key to the future lies in whether applications can truly be implemented and form a profitable model. He believes the market is transitioning from a "high-certainty narrative" to a "stage requiring verification," where valuations and volatility may rise simultaneously. Looking at future trends: AI applications will indeed continue to advance around 2026, with some models showing significant improvements in capabilities and gradually entering enterprise application scenarios. 5️⃣ April 23, 2026, Hong Kong Web3 Carnival. Fu Peng, as the Chief Economist of Newfire Group, attended a related meeting and discussed the evolutionary path of crypto assets.He proposed that crypto assets are gradually evolving from being primarily "faith-driven" in their early stages to more mature financial assets, and their development path is somewhat similar to that of traditional financial derivatives. He pointed out that decentralization is not about completely removing the center, but rather a redistribution and reconstruction of the original centralized structure, which is one reason why traditional finance is gradually changing its attitude towards crypto assets. III. Why did he become so popular? The dissemination effect of a single block: After entering the Web3 community, a round of controversy surrounding his interaction methods on social media platforms objectively amplified his public exposure. The discussion surrounding "blocking some practitioners and KOLs" also led many readers outside the circle to search for: Who exactly is Fu Peng? After he became active on X, he posted an expression with obvious "show-off" connotations, roughly saying: "Many people don't understand what I'm saying; only those with a certain level of understanding will understand." Subsequently, a number of cryptocurrency-related accounts were blocked or blacklisted by him. This action triggered two completely different reactions in the Web3 community. Supporters believed that this was a macro analyst actively filtering information noise to maintain the independence of his analytical framework; critics believed that this large-scale blocking behavior was clearly exclusive. Regardless, this event objectively helped him achieve significant exposure. In the Web3 community, this controversial entry method was more effective at self-introduction than a speech. IV. Why is he here? If we only look at the labels, Fu Peng's transition from a traditional macro researcher to Web3 seems like a huge leap. But if we return to the issues he has long focused on, we find that this path is not so disjointed. In reviewing Fu Peng's past public statements, we can find that he has a relatively stable analytical habit: interpreting the behavior of young people as economic signals. For him, Web3 is more like a continuation of this observation path: young people are dominant, emotions are driven, and risk appetite is higher. These characteristics recur at different stages, only the medium has changed. As early as around 2021, he mentioned in some interviews that there was still a lack of full understanding of Bitcoin within the traditional framework, but its pricing logic could be observed from the perspective of liquidity. In the following years, he did not directly participate in specific trading narratives, but continued to observe the development of this field from a macro perspective. Based on these observations, he gradually formed a judgment: crypto assets are evolving from an early peripheral market to financial instruments that can be incorporated into asset allocation systems, so he chose to enter this emerging industry. The controversy surrounding Fu Peng will not disappear in the end.Whether in traditional finance or in today's Web3 context, he's not someone who easily gains consensus. But that's precisely why he deserves to be singled out. Not because he provided a standard answer, but because his path reflects a connection between the macroeconomic narrative and the narrative of new assets in China over the past few years. Rather than saying Fu Peng "suddenly turned to Web3," it's more accurate to say he simply followed his existing questions and arrived here. If, in the coming years, traditional macro analysts increasingly appear at discussions about AI and Web3, Fu Peng may not be the last. [Biteye]