In the summer of 2025, China Renaissance once again captured the spotlight by signing a memorandum of understanding with YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), planning a $100 million investment in BNB, the native token of the BNB Chain public blockchain.

Just two months earlier, the board had approved a similar-sized allocation to pursue opportunities in Web3 and cryptocurrency. These concentrated moves have led many to speculate that China Renaissance is orchestrating a major transformation—or even a self-reinvention.

In China’s investment banking landscape, China Renaissance has always been a distinctive player.

It lacks the state-owned pedigree of CICC or CITIC and the century-old foundation of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Its growth has closely tracked the rapid rise of China’s internet sector. Since its establishment in 2005, China Renaissance has overseen and facilitated landmark M&A deals, such as the mergers of Didi and Kuaidi, Meituan and Dianping, and 58.com and Ganji.com. Nearly every industry-defining merger in China’s internet history features China Renaissance behind the scenes. Without that extraordinary decade of internet growth, China Renaissance may never have gained its reputation as the “King of M&A.”

But as the era of internet expansion gave way to a saturated, competitive landscape—and as antitrust enforcement intensified—the very foundation that supported China Renaissance’s success began to shift fundamentally.

This once-glamorous boutique investment bank now faces unprecedented existential challenges.

China Renaissance’s move into Web3 may be an act of self-redemption, or it may signal the collective destiny of traditional investment banks in the digital era.

The King of M&A’s Dilemma

In 2021, China Renaissance posted nearly ideal results: total annual revenue reached RMB 2.504 billion, and net profit soared 56.5% year-on-year to RMB 1.624 billion. That year, it completed prominent projects such as Li Auto’s Hong Kong IPO and Kuaishou Technology’s public listing. In his annual letter, Bao Fan wrote with excitement, “We are at the starting point of the next decade for the new economy.”

Yet, the peak often marks a turning point.

In 2022, both revenue and net profit at China Renaissance Holdings declined: annual revenue fell to RMB 1.533 billion, down 8.36% year-over-year, while annual losses reached RMB 564 million, a year-on-year plunge of 134.71%.

Behind this was a rapid cooling of the broader environment.

According to the “2022 China Corporate M&A Market Review and Outlook,” total national M&A transaction volume fell 23.5% year-over-year, with the TMT sector dropping 41%. For China Renaissance, which had thrived on TMT M&A, this amounted to the loss of its key market position.

But the deeper crisis was about the business model—not just the numbers.

China Renaissance rose by timing its ascent with China’s internet boom, going from zero to one hundred. That was a period of unbridled energy: startups needed to scale quickly, giants sought to buy the next big thing, and capital was eager for stories. China Renaissance played the role of “super intermediary” in this capital frenzy. Bao Fan’s charisma, relationships, and sharp sense for industry trends formed the firm’s real moat.

As long as the market was in an expansion phase and M&A was the capital market’s script of choice, China Renaissance thrived. Nearly every transformative deal bore its fingerprints.

But as the environment reversed, the story changed. The market entered a zero-sum game, “powerful alliances” drew regulatory scrutiny, and the previously unbeatable model lost its stage.

This is the company’s true dilemma: it’s not merely a decline in business, but the obsolescence of its success formula in a new era.

Centralized personal networks, closed information channels, and relationship-driven value creation no longer fit a world increasingly defined by transparency, openness, and the dismantling of intermediaries.

This is especially true in a company culture centered around Bao Fan. As one source told Reuters, China Renaissance remains a “one-man business, key-person focus”—a business model hard to sustain in the new environment.

China Renaissance’s Quiet Web3 Strategy

China Renaissance’s Web3 foray didn’t happen overnight.

In May 2018, Circle announced a $110 million Series E round, with top-tier names like IDG, Breyer Capital, and Bitmain on the investor list. Few noticed China Renaissance’s participation.

If not for a congratulatory note from China Renaissance in June 2025, most would not have realized it entered the stablecoin space so early. A closer look at Circle’s prospectus showed China Renaissance was not a major shareholder—implying only a small stake or an exit before IPO.

Still, China Renaissance’s bet on Circle reignited long-absent market excitement.

After being named a “Circle concept stock,” China Renaissance’s share price soared from HK$3 to above HK$6—a gain of over 100%. For a company whose post-IPO performance had been sluggish, this was a powerful boost.

China Renaissance’s move on Circle reflected Bao Fan’s long-term foresight.

Back in 2015, at the zenith of its influence in China’s new economy, China Renaissance was involved in virtually every major internet merger or fundraising event. Yet, at the height of its success, Bao Fan made a sobering prediction: “In three years, we may not even have a seat at the table.”

That statement marked the beginning of China Renaissance’s transformation. Bao Fan saw clearly that a business reliant solely on advisory and commission fees was too fragile; the firm needed a new growth engine. He chose to evolve from “service provider” to “participant,” from advisor to shareholder.

Within its investment portfolio, Circle was far from the brightest star. During the same period, China Renaissance invested in Meituan, JD Digits, Kuaishou, Li Auto, NIO, and Pop Mart. In comparison, a US crypto payments company appeared “unorthodox.” Even Lei Ming, who led the deal, later admitted luck was involved—China Renaissance entered late and with a small stake, reaping little direct profit.

Beyond Circle, China Renaissance made other moves in crypto: direct investments in Amber Group and Matrixport; financial advisory roles for Canaan, Bitdeer, and HashKey; and bringing on Frank Fu Kan, a veteran blockchain entrepreneur, as an independent non-executive director.

However, these efforts did not immediately yield impressive results. According to 36Kr, China Renaissance’s crypto market earnings came mainly from financing services rather than outsized capital gains. The real value of the Circle investment lay more in market imagination and stock price recovery.

Post-Bao Fan High Stakes

In 2024, China Renaissance entered a new era of leadership.

Following Bao Fan’s disappearance, his wife Xu Yanqing stepped forward to take the helm of the firm. With former CEO Xie Yijing out, China Renaissance established a new leadership “triumvirate” of Chairwoman Xu Yanqing, CEO Wang Lixing, and Executive Director Du Yongbo.

Xu Yanqing soon launched the “China Renaissance 2.0” strategy: reducing dependence on traditional internet business, and betting big on hard tech, Web3, and digital finance.

This pivot was not arbitrary but precisely timed to policy milestones.

In May 2025, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council passed the Stablecoin Bill; a month later, authorities issued the Digital Asset Development Policy Statement 2.0. In the same window, China Renaissance’s board approved a $100 million budget to formally enter the Web3 and digital asset markets.

This move felt familiar to market observers. China Renaissance had once excelled at seizing historic inflection points, helping Chinese internet companies outpace their wildest rivals. Now, it seemed eager to replicate that playbook in a new field—albeit without Bao Fan.

In August, China Renaissance signed an MOU with YZi Labs to allocate $100 million to BNB, becoming the first Hong Kong-listed company to include BNB in its treasury. The market quickly dubbed it the “BNB MicroStrategy of Hong Kong stocks.”

Buying crypto was just the start; China Renaissance planned to further support the BNB ecosystem in two key ways.

First, by developing fund-based products with China Asset Management (Hong Kong) and other partners, facilitating BNB’s listing on Hong Kong–compliant virtual asset platforms. Perhaps not coincidentally, on September 3, Hong Kong–licensed exchange OSL opened BNB trading for professional investors, becoming the city’s first exchange to support BNB.

Second, with support from YZi Labs, China Renaissance aimed to set up a multi-hundred-million-dollar RWA (real-world asset) fund to promote stablecoin and RWA adoption on BNB Chain by Hong Kong–listed companies.

Through these efforts, China Renaissance sought to leverage the momentum of Binance—the world’s largest exchange—to position itself at the center of the Web3 ecosystem.

At the August 29 BNB Chain 5th Anniversary event, Xu Yanqing joined YZi Labs head Ella Zhang on stage: “Since partnering with YZi Labs, we’ve received waves of inquiries from traditional financial institutions. They’re no longer asking ‘why allocate to digital assets,’ but ‘how can we effectively allocate to core assets like BNB that represent the future of finance?’”

She continued, “China Renaissance is not just aiming to bridge Web2 and Web3, but also to leverage our expertise in investment banking, asset management, and wealth management to keep China Renaissance at the forefront as the most iconic investment bank of the Web3 era.”

To sum up, China Renaissance’s strategy is clear:

External logic: When traditional institutions want exposure to crypto, direct investments carry higher risk, but investing in China Renaissance stock offers indirect crypto asset exposure.

Internal logic: The convergence of Web3 and Web2 is bound to generate new demand for fundraising and M&A, potentially repeating the “internet M&A decade.”

In other words, China Renaissance seeks to maintain its role as the “premier investment bank” capable of shaping the crypto landscape.

While the vision is ambitious, execution remains a challenge.

Transformation Dilemmas

As a boutique investment bank built on TMT M&A, China Renaissance’s core advantage has always been its deep insight into China’s internet sector and its founder networks.

In traditional investment banking, incentives are clear: commissions, short-term performance, and rapid deal closures. Bankers are classic “professional service providers”—complete the deal, collect the fee.

But for China Renaissance, venturing fully into the crypto market means confronting a hard reality: many traditional top-tier funds have lost big in this new world.

Most notably, the financial advisor (FA) model is almost guaranteed to fail here.

China Renaissance’s “super intermediary” status in the golden era of internet M&A was built on relationships and information asymmetry—knowing who was raising, who was selling, and what the valuation was, information entrusted to a select few. In the on-chain world, however, capital flows, governance votes, and protocol data are open and transparent; anyone can track them in real time. Except for a few large Asian exchanges and asset managers, most projects now raise capital like pooled investments, and some derivatives platforms, like Hyperliquid, never require outside fundraising at all. The old negotiation and matchmaking advantages are gone.

To capture significant returns, China Renaissance must invest directly.

“Serving as FA is about networking; investing is where the money is made,” one FA veteran remarked after entering the crypto space. He made friends—and promptly lost money when he started investing.

The crypto primary market is extremely risky. Success requires deep understanding of crypto’s underlying logic and connections with the most talented entrepreneurs, enabling ongoing value creation.

But the industry is filled with short-lived narratives: projects can multiply in value within months, then crash when the hype fades. Teams lacking business models survive only by selling tokens, as valuations decline. Market confidence in altcoins has evaporated, with capital concentrating in BTC, ETH, and SOL. Even today’s popular “token-equity linkage” trend might be invalidated down the line.

This brings two layers of risk for China Renaissance:

First, can it avoid narrative-driven pitfalls? Second, the risk to its reputation.

Crypto cycles move far faster than traditional markets—a hacked protocol or project exit can destroy value within 48 hours. One misstep could cost China Renaissance not just capital, but its hard-earned reputation as a boutique investment bank.

Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, lost approximately $275 million on FTX. Worse than the financial loss, as a state-backed investor, Temasek faced parliamentary hearings and publicly conceded “major diligence failures,” suffering a severe reputation blow.

From this standpoint, China Renaissance’s optimal path may not lie in rebuilding itself as a crypto “King of M&A,” but in becoming a major secondary market player. By strategically allocating to BTC, ETH, and BNB, combined with quant and hedging strategies, it could seek steady returns.

This route is risky as well.

Trading means competing directly with specialized quant funds, crypto-native trading firms, and global market makers. Without robust technical capabilities, risk control systems, and on-chain data analytics, traditional investment banking brands and networks offer little real advantage.

China Renaissance is now in a difficult spot:

As FA, its information edge is gone; as VC, narrative traps are everywhere; as a secondary player, it lacks crypto-native DNA.

This is the predicament facing many traditional FAs and VCs in crypto: to gain a foothold in Web3, capital is not enough—complete cognitive transformation is needed.

It must answer a fundamental question: in a transparent, disintermediated world, what is China Renaissance’s real value?

Looking back from 2025, China Renaissance’s Web3 transformation looks more like a reluctant experiment, a move compelled by circumstances, not a free choice.

Twenty years ago, China Renaissance surged by perfectly timing the rise of China’s internet. Bao Fan thrived as a challenger, using an “internet-native investment banking” approach to disrupt traditional finance.

Today is different: Web3 is not about moving offline business online, but about rewriting financial logic from the ground up—decentralization, permissionless access, and community governance directly threaten the intermediary foundation of traditional investment banks.

This role reversal makes the challenge even sharper. Once an agile upstart, China Renaissance is now an entrenched incumbent. Going “all in” on a new paradigm demands sacrifice and letting go of the past. For an institution entrenched in China’s M&A history, this choice is far more difficult than it was twenty years ago.

Globally, few traditional financial institutions have made real breakthroughs in digital asset adoption. Goldman Sachs was the earliest banking trailblazer, but digital asset business remains negligible in its revenues. The universal question in the industry: can traditional players reinvent themselves, or are they destined to be overtaken by new disruptors?

For China Renaissance, there’s no turning back.

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