The experiment with no way back: China Renaissance's bold bet on Web3
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The experiment with no way back: China Renaissance's bold bet on Web3
For China Renaissance, there is no turning back.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: Ada, TechFlow
In the summer of 2025, China Renaissance once again became a market focal point as it signed a memorandum of understanding with YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), planning to invest $100 million into BNB Chain's native token, BNB.
Just two months earlier, its board had approved an equivalent sum to enter the Web3 and cryptocurrency space. Such密集 moves have led outsiders to speculate that China Renaissance is plotting a deep transformation—perhaps even self-revolution.
Within China’s investment banking landscape, China Renaissance has always been unique.
It lacks the state-owned background of CICC or CITIC Securities, and doesn’t carry the century-long legacy of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Its growth trajectory has almost perfectly aligned with the rise of China’s internet boom. Since its founding in 2005, China Renaissance has witnessed and orchestrated landmark mergers such as Didi and Kuaidi, Meituan and Dianping, and 58.com and Ganji... Behind nearly every deal shaping industry landscapes, China Renaissance was present. Without the decade of explosive internet growth, it might never have claimed the throne as the “King of M&A.”
Yet as the tide recedes and internet economies shift from expansion to consolidation, with antitrust regulations tightening, the very foundation upon which China Renaissance thrives is undergoing fundamental change.
This once-glamorous boutique investment bank now faces unprecedented survival challenges.
Is its move into Web3 a form of self-redemption, or merely the collective fate of traditional investment banks in the digital age?
The Dilemma of the "M&A King"
In 2021, China Renaissance delivered an almost flawless performance: full-year total revenue reached RMB 2.504 billion, while net profit surged 56.5% year-on-year to RMB 1.624 billion. That year, it successfully executed landmark projects including Li Auto’s Hong Kong IPO and Kuaishou’s listing. In the annual report, Fan Bao excitedly wrote: “We are standing at the starting point of the next ten years of the new economy.”
But peaks often mark the beginning of a turn.
In 2022, both revenue and net profit for China Renaissance Holdings declined: annual revenue dropped 8.36% to RMB 1.533 billion, while the company posted a full-year loss of RMB 564 million—a year-on-year decline of 134.71%.
Beneath this lies a rapidly cooling macro environment.
According to the "Review and Outlook of China’s M&A Market 2022," national M&A transaction volume fell 23.5% year-on-year, with TMT sector deals plunging by as much as 41%. For a firm like China Renaissance, built on TMT-driven M&A, this was akin to having its lifeblood cut off.
Yet deeper than the numbers is the crisis of business model.
China Renaissance rose during China’s internet golden era—from zero to one, then to one hundred. It was a wild time: startups needed rapid scaling, tech giants sought to buy up entire sectors, and capital chased compelling narratives. China Renaissance positioned itself as the “super matchmaker” in this capital frenzy. Fan Bao’s personal charisma, network resources, and sharp industry instincts formed the firm’s moat.
As long as the market remained in an expansion phase and M&A dominated capital markets, China Renaissance thrived. Behind nearly every transformative deal, they were there brokering behind the scenes.
But when conditions reversed, the story changed. As markets shifted to competition over existing assets, “strong-merging-with-strong” deals turned into regulatory red lines, leaving their once-unstoppable model without a stage.
This is China Renaissance’s real dilemma: not declining business, but a successful model rendered obsolete by changing times.
A centralized network of relationships, closed information channels, and relationship-driven value creation appear increasingly out of place in a world that values transparency, openness, and disintermediation.
Especially within a culture centered around Fan Bao, adaptation becomes even harder. A person familiar with Fan Bao, cited by Reuters, described China Renaissance as still operating a “one-man business,” a key-person-focused model that is no longer sustainable in the new era.
Covert Web3 Moves
China Renaissance’s exploration of Web3 was not impulsive.
In May 2018, Circle announced a $110 million Series E round. The investor list included top-tier names like IDG, Breyer Capital, and Bitmain. Almost unnoticed, China Renaissance was also among them.
Had China Renaissance not issued a congratulatory letter in June 2025, few would have known it had already entered the stablecoin race. Scrutinizing Circle’s prospectus reveals China Renaissance is not listed as a major shareholder, suggesting limited stake or prior divestment before IPO.
Nonetheless, simply being linked to Circle reignited investor excitement.
After joining the “Circle概念股” club, China Renaissance’s stock price soared from HK$3 to over HK$6—a surge exceeding 100%. For a company whose share price had trended downward post-IPO, this was a powerful boost.
Its ability to invest in Circle traces back to Fan Bao’s foresight years earlier.
In 2015, at the height of China Renaissance’s power—as the hottest investment bank in China’s new economy, involved in nearly every major internet merger and funding round—Fan Bao made a surprising statement: “In three years, we might have no food to eat.”
That remark became the starting point of its transformation. Fan Bao understood clearly that relying solely on advisory fees and commissions was too fragile; a new growth engine was essential. So he shifted from being a “service provider” to a “participant,” from advisor to shareholder.
Within China Renaissance’s broader portfolio, Circle wasn’t a standout. At the same time, it invested in Meituan, JD Digits, Kuaishou, Li Auto, NIO, Pop Mart… Compared to these, a U.S. crypto payment firm seemed somewhat “offbeat.” Moreover, Lei Ming, who led the investment, later admitted: “Hitting Circle was partly due to luck.” China Renaissance entered late with a small stake, making it hard to claim significant financial gains.
Beyond Circle, China Renaissance has left multiple footprints in the crypto space: direct investments in Amber Group and Matrixport; advisory roles for Canaan, Bitdeer, and HashKey; and appointing Frank Fu Kan, a veteran with extensive blockchain experience, as independent non-executive director.
Yet these efforts haven’t immediately translated into strong performance. According to 36Kr, in the crypto market, China Renaissance has mostly earned hard-earned fees from financing services, not outsized returns from capital operations. Circle’s value to China Renaissance exists more in imagination and market cap recovery.
A High-Stakes Bet in the Post-Fan Era
In 2024, China Renaissance welcomed a new leadership team.
After Fan Bao’s disappearance, his wife Xu Yanqing stepped forward, taking control of the boutique firm. Following the exit of former CEO Xie Yijing, China Renaissance established a core leadership trio: Chairman Xu Yanqing, CEO Wang Lixing, and Executive Director Du Yongbo.
Xu Yanqing introduced the “China Renaissance 2.0” strategy: reducing reliance on traditional internet businesses and placing big bets onhard tech, Web3, anddigital finance.
This pivot wasn’t impulsive, but precisely timed with policy shifts.
In May 2025, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council passed the Draft Stablecoin Regulation Bill; a month later, the government released the “Digital Asset Development Policy Declaration 2.0.” Almost simultaneously, China Renaissance announced board approval of a $100 million budget to officially enter the Web3 and crypto asset arena.
This decision felt familiar. In the past, China Renaissance mastered timing, helping Chinese internet firms dominate a decade of explosive growth. Now, it seems to want to replicate that success on a new track—but this time, without Fan Bao.
In August, China Renaissance signed another MOU with YZi Labs, planning to allocate $100 million into BNB assets, becoming the first Hong Kong-listed company to include BNB in its digital asset portfolio. The market quickly coined a simple analogy: the “MicroStrategy of Hong Kong stocks” for BNB.
Purchasing tokens is just the first step. China Renaissance plans to further empower the BNB ecosystem in two ways.
First, partnering with China Asset Management (Hong Kong) and others to develop fund products, promoting BNB listings on compliant virtual asset exchanges in Hong Kong. Coincidentally or not, on September 3, OSL—the compliant Hong Kong trading platform—launched BNB trading for professional investors, becoming the first exchange in Hong Kong to support BNB.
Second, with assistance from YZi Labs, China Renaissance will establish a multi-hundred-million-dollar RWA fund to promote the adoption of BNB Chain in Hong Kong-listed firms’ stablecoins and RWA applications.
Behind these moves lies China Renaissance’s ambition: leveraging Binance—the largest exchange—to position itself as a core player in Web3.
On August 29, at the fifth anniversary celebration of BNB Chain, Xu Yanqing, in dialogue with YZi Labs head Ella Zhang, stated: “Since establishing our strategic partnership with YZi Labs, we’ve received numerous inquiries from traditional financial institutions—not asking ‘why invest in digital assets,’ but rather ‘how to properly allocate core assets like BNB that represent the future of finance.’”
She added: “China Renaissance aims not only to bridge Web2 and Web3 worlds, but also, through our expertise in investment banking, asset management, and wealth management, to lead once again as the most iconic investment bank of the Web3 era.”
In summary, China Renaissance’s logic is clear:
External logic: When traditional institutions seek entry into crypto markets, direct investment carries high risk. Investing in China Renaissance shares offers indirect exposure to digital assets.
Internal logic: The convergence of Web3 and Web2 will inevitably generate new financing and M&A demands, enabling a repeat of the “decade of internet M&A.”
In other words, China Renaissance wants to remain the “top investment bank” capable of shaping market dynamics—even in the crypto world.
The vision is grand, but real-world constraints are harsh.
Challenges of Transformation
As a boutique investment bank rooted in TMT M&A, China Renaissance’s core advantage has always been deep understanding of China’s internet sector and founder networks.
In traditional investment banking, incentives are clear: commission splits, short-term performance, quick results. Bankers are classic “professional service providers”—complete a deal, collect fees.
For China Renaissance, fully entering the crypto market means confronting a harsh reality: many elite traditional capital firms have failed in this emerging field.
First, the FA model is almost doomed to fail.
During the golden age of internet M&A, China Renaissance became the “super matchmaker” thanks to its network and information asymmetry—who was fundraising, who was selling, valuations—all known only to select investment banks. But in the on-chain world, capital flows, governance votes, and protocol data are nearly fully transparent. Anyone can monitor activity in real time. Except for a few large Asian exchanges or asset managers needing FA assistance, most project funding resembles “crowdsourced investing.” Platforms like Hyperliquid, a derivatives exchange, never required external funding at all. The negotiation and matchmaking advantages of investment banks have greatly diminished.
Thus, to achieve real alpha, China Renaissance must dive in directly as an investor.
“Doing FA is mainly for networking; profits come from investing,” said one FA practitioner who entered crypto with this mindset. He successfully built connections and started investing—only to lose money.
The primary market in crypto is extremely dangerous. To succeed, one must deeply understand crypto’s underlying logic and maintain close ties with top founders to continuously add value.
Yet crypto is filled with short-term narrative traps: a project may skyrocket in valuation within months if it hits the right trend, but once the hype fades, its market cap halves instantly. With weak business models, teams rely on token sales, leading to continuous devaluation. Moreover, the market has largely lost faith in altcoins, with capital concentrating on top assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL. Even today’s popular “token-stock synergy” model may eventually be proven flawed.
For China Renaissance, this implies two layers of risk:
One, whether its investment judgment can see through narrative traps; two, reputational risk.
Crypto cycles evolve far faster than traditional markets. A hacked protocol or a rug-pull project can destroy market cap within 48 hours. If China Renaissance suffers a major loss, not only will capital be damaged, but it could also lose the hard-earned reputation of a “boutique investment bank.”
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek lost approximately $275 million in FTX. Worse, as a state-linked investor, Temasek faced parliamentary questioning and was forced to admit “major due diligence failures,” suffering severe reputational damage.
From this perspective, China Renaissance’s best path may not be recreating a crypto version of the “M&A King,” but evolving into a major secondary-market player. By strategically allocating core assets like BTC, ETH, and BNB, combined with quant strategies and risk hedging, it could pursue steady returns.
But this path is equally perilous.
Trading means competing against countless professional quant funds, crypto-native trading teams, and global market makers. Without deep technical capabilities, robust risk controls, and on-chain data insights, brand and network alone cannot build real advantage.
China Renaissance finds itself in a difficult position:
As an FA, it no longer holds information edges; as a VC, it faces dense narrative traps; as a secondary-market player, it lacks native DNA.
This is the shared dilemma of traditional FAs and VCs in crypto. To stand in Web3 requires not just capital, but complete cognitive restructuring.
It must answer one question: in a transparent, disintermediated world, what is China Renaissance’s value?
Looking back from 2025, China Renaissance’s Web3 transformation appears less like a voluntary leap and more like an experiment forced onto the table—pushed gradually into a corner by changing circumstances.
Twenty years ago, China Renaissance rose by catching the takeoff window of China’s internet. Then, Fan Bao, brimming with challenger energy, carved a niche for “an investment bank that understands the internet” within traditional finance.
Today’s situation is different: Web3 does not simply move offline services online—it completely rewrites financial logic: decentralization, permissionless access, community governance. These principles directly challenge the intermediary role upon which investment banks depend.
The role shift makes the question sharper. Back then, China Renaissance was a startup, agile and unburdened. Today, it is an incumbent. Going “all in” on a new track means abandoning and betraying past successes. For an institution already written into China’s M&A history, this choice is far more painful than two decades ago.
Globally, traditional financial institutions rarely achieve true breakthroughs in digital asset transformation. Goldman Sachs was among the earliest to experiment, yet digital assets still contribute negligibly to its revenue. The industry’s shared dilemma remains: can it self-revolutionize, or is it destined to be replaced by new species?
For China Renaissance, however, there is no turning back.
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