The Death of Hsin-Ju, a Tragedy for Crypto

Why Hsin-Ju @hsinju died in the Mojave Desert is actually still undetermined, but I think it's easy for people to fall into conspiracy theories.

Hsin-Ju Chuang, former partner and head of platform at Hack VC. On August 24, 2026, she was found in a vehicle near the I-15 off-ramp in the Mojave Desert in California. She was 37 years old. The cause of death has not yet been released.

According to public records from the San Bernardino County coroner, at 9:47 p.m. on August 24, the California Highway Patrol responded to a call on southbound I-15, south of Field Road, and confirmed the death of 37-year-old Hsin-Ju Chuang.

Desert stretch of I-15 from Barstow toward Nevada

However, as of now, the cause of Hsin-Ju's death remains unclear, and the matter has not yet been classified as a criminal case.

The prevailing speculation at the moment is that her former company, Hack VC @hack_vc, used certain means to physically remove her from the face of the earth.

But regardless, I think Hsin-Ju's death is a tragedy for crypto!!

The Feud Between Hsin-Ju and Hack VC

About a year ago, Hsin-Ju, who worked at Hack VC, became involved in a labor dispute with the company.

According to Hsin-Ju's own public statement on August 24, during her time at Hack VC she suffered from Graves' disease, hyperthyroidism, and severe insomnia, yet still bore high-intensity work over a long period, including a series of events during Hack Summit and Korea Blockchain Week.

Original post https://x.com/hsinju/status/2091571258869879015

She said she was working 13 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, and could only sleep 0 to 4 hours a night. Because the job was so painful and tormenting, Hsin-Ju even contemplated suicide.

She also accused Hack VC co-founder Alex Pack and partner Daniel Bulaevsky of pressuring her when she tried to exit the project and leave the company, including a so-called "industry blacklisting."

Of course, these are all accusations unilaterally made public by Hsin-Ju, and Hack VC does not agree with her account, so it comes down to one side's word against the other's.

In terms of her position, then, Hsin-Ju appeared to be a significant player at Hack VC.

As a veteran of the industry, she did growth at Stellar in her early years, joined the then very early Solana team in 2018 as head of growth, later founded Dystopia Labs, organized Ethereum developer events over the long term, then served as head of growth at Fhenix, and ultimately became a partner and head of platform at Hack VC.

A welcome post from HackVC co-founder Alexander Pack when Hsin-Ju joined https://x.com/alpackaP/status/1899108367072661597

From the perspective of someone like Hsin-Ju, who has深耕 the industry for many years, her core asset is essentially her industry relationship network. Conferences, project teams, developers, funds, media, investors, introductions, endorsements — these things together constitute her professional value.

In traditional industries, the word "blacklisting" might just be a boss sounding off, but in an industry like VC and Crypto that relies heavily on relationship networks, its nature is actually different.

Although Crypto has always preached permissionlessness and decentralization on-chain, from the perspective of a practitioner, a worker, her résumé, fundraising relationships, industry reputation, and collaboration opportunities all live off-chain.

This is especially true in the field of crypto VC, which is inherently a very typical acquaintance society. Many positions are not openly recruited, some project fundraises are not publicly tendered, and many opportunities come from internal referrals or relationship-based partnerships.

Although on-chain assets enjoy extremely high freedom of exit, off-chain professional relationships are highly centralized. In other words, a wallet can come and go freely, but in the crypto industry, especially in core fields like this, a person's livelihood cannot.

On the other side, there is a very悬殊 disparity in power between the two parties.

Hack VC is a top-tier VC in the crypto industry, having invested in a range of top projects including EigenLayer, Goldfinch, Mysten Labs (Sui), io.net, Elixir, Berachain, and others.

As of the third quarter of 2025, its AUM had reached approximately $700 million.

So for an individual, what you face is not simply a company, but the capital, connections, and industry credit network behind that company.

This is also why Hsin-Ju was so wary of the so-called industry blacklist. After all, a few phone calls from Hack VC, a few background checks, plus a mark that this person is difficult to work with, could all have a real impact on Hsin-Ju's career.

A Reconciliation That Can Never Be "Reached"

According to Hsin-Ju, the two sides' lawyers had been in contact for nearly a year and were preparing to enter private mediation and settlement, but she ultimately fired her lawyer and refused to accept compensation carrying confidentiality conditions from Hack VC.

Hsin-Ju publicly stated that she would rather take $0 than trade her silence for a settlement, and announced that on August 26 she would make public the written evidence she had retained during her time at Hack VC and the subsequent dispute, to substantiate her earlier allegations regarding high-intensity work, threats of industry blacklisting, insurance handling, and subsequent negotiations.

Hack VC subsequently responded that the company had noticed her posts and was concerned about her health, but that the two sides had major disagreements over the course of events and would not publicly discuss specific details for the time being due to privacy reasons.

HackVC co-founder Alexander Pack posted on social media yesterday that he had not spoken directly with Hsin-Ju for more than 10 months, confirming that they had been at odds for a long time,https://x.com/alpackaP/status/2102758451390595098

Of course, there is really no need to demonize a normal business settlement. Confidentiality clauses are very common in labor and commercial disputes and in themselves do not prove that anyone has something to hide.

From the perspective of the interest structure, once Hsin-Ju refused to settle and made public the aforementioned so-called evidence in her possession, the nature of the whole matter would change.

In fact, at the private mediation stage, this is a matter between the two sides' lawyers, but once she makes the evidence public, it will spread from a legal issue into a reputational issue.

At that point, HackVC's fund LPs, portfolio projects, other employees, and partners would more or less take notice, and ultimately it would more or less affect HackVC's credibility.

So it is not hard to see here that Hsin-Ju was extremely dissatisfied with the settlement terms proposed by HackVC, and believed that the conflict between the two sides had become irreconcilable. At this point she hoped to drag a dispute that could have remained in private space back into public space.

So on August 24 she announced her refusal to settle and gave notice that she would make the evidence public on August 26.

But on the night of August 24, she was found dead in the Mojave Desert.

In fact, these two points in time are far too close. So close that anyone who normally sees this timeline would have associations pop into their head.

But associations are still just associations.

At present we have no evidence to prove that Hack VC, any executive, or this labor dispute had a causal relationship with her death.

She had previously publicly mentioned her Graves' disease, hyperthyroidism, and severe insomnia, and had also said she had experienced a suicidal episode.

Death could come from illness, an accident, environmental factors, or other circumstances we do not yet know about.

Before forensic and police authorities provide more materials, I think the words "silencing" are in fact conspiracy theory.

Why, after this happened, did everyone so naturally think of "silencing"?

A report released by Chainalysis in August this year shows that as of the end of June 2026, 46 violent incidents targeting cryptocurrency holders had been publicly recorded globally, of which 12 ultimately resulted in successful payment, and more than $30 million in crypto assets were known to have been violently taken. Home invasions already accounted for 37% of related incidents this year, and kidnappings about 52%.

Chart of crypto industry wrench attacks

Source:https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/violent-crypto-wrench-attacks-2026/

Although these data have no direct relationship with Hsin-Ju's death, the offline violence risk of Crypto already genuinely exists in this industry's collective experience.

In the traditional financial system, a person's wealth is usually separated by banks, custodians, freezing mechanisms, and clearing systems.

Crypto has removed a great many of these intermediary layers. Money can cross half the globe in ten seconds, so attacks that used to happen online will gradually extend offline.

In other words, if I can't get your private key, then I'll go find the person holding the private key.

And precisely because this industry has already seen a large number of similar cases, when elements such as "public rights defense," "previewing the release of evidence," "death that same night," and "desert highway" appear at the same time, the public will automatically piece them together into a complete story.

In fact, this story establishes a complete logic psychologically, but that does not mean it holds up evidentially.

I even think that Chen Jian's earlier view — don't tear into each other easily, don't push things to the extreme, the jianghu is about human relations — is more valuable than all kinds of "100% silenced" rhetoric, because after all it represents a very typical risk perception in crypto circles.

And in the crypto industry, when a serious conflict of interest arises between an individual and a company, many practitioners usually do not think of labor law, judicial procedures, or corporate governance, but instead first leave each other a way out.

Because everyone subconsciously knows that this industry has a large number of punishment mechanisms outside formal institutions.

These punishment mechanisms can be not giving you the next round of funding, can be labeling and smearing you within the circle, or can be continuously consuming you through relationship costs. These things are not necessarily illegal, and some can never even be proven, but they can equally determine whether a person can continue to survive in this industry.

So the saying "the jianghu is about human relations" actually exposes the real security outlook of many people in the crypto industry, namely that when institutions are not reliable enough, people begin to rely on human relations to control risk.

Rational Thinking

So let's think rationally. From the perspective of interests, Hack VC is not a fund that has already reached the edge of a cliff and needs to preserve its life at all costs. On the contrary, at that time it was still clearly in an expansion phase.

In 2024, Hack VC's AUM was still about $425 million. By the third quarter of 2025 it had grown to about $700 million, with committed capital of about $550 million by year-end. In 2025 it also invested about $50 million, completed 29 investments, 26 portfolio projects issued tokens, and its early investment Rail was acquired by Ripple for $200 million. After entering 2026, Hack VC also continued to invest in and lead new projects.

In other words, this is a VC that is still fundraising, investing, expanding its team, and at the same time constantly having to deal with LPs, project teams, and founders.

For an institution like this, the most important asset is precisely not the several hundred million dollars on the books. More important is credit.

So from a purely risk-reward perspective, taking any extreme or even illegal approach to deal with a former employee's labor dispute is actually an extremely unprofitable business. The benefit such an approach could obtain is nothing more than making a former employee shut up and avoiding some negative public opinion and reputational loss.

But once the matter is exposed, what one may face is criminal investigation, litigation, LP questioning, partner cutting ties, future fundraising being blocked, and even the entire fund brand and management's careers being ruined together.

The former is at most a reputational crisis; the latter may directly become a survival crisis.

Moreover, VC is different from many ordinary companies in that it is itself a business built on long-term credit. Even if a labor dispute becomes as ugly as it can be, in theory it can still be resolved through lawyers, compensation, arbitration, and PR; but if the criminal red line is truly crossed, then the nature changes completely.

So at least from the perspective of institutional rationality and economic interest, I find it hard to find a reasonable motive for Hack VC to voluntarily take on this kind of unlimited downside risk over a labor dispute. At least from an economic logic, it is not an explanation that easily holds up.

Hsin-Ju's Death, a Tragedy for Crypto

The crypto industry has always been a field that is one thing on the surface and another underneath. Crypto has always advertised the ideals of decentralization, individual sovereignty, free exit, and Code is Law to the outside world, yet Crypto's off-chain world is highly centralized, not the ideal utopia of a DAO.

A few funds control a large amount of early capital, a few conferences control industry exposure, a few trading platforms control liquidity gateways, and a group of core builders, VCs, and KOLs form a relationship network whose scale is not as large as one might imagine.

The technology is decentralized, but resource allocation remains highly centralized. Hsin-Ju was in fact exactly a person who lived on-chain.

Whether as head of platform, head of growth, running conferences, or connecting projects and capital, she herself was a node in this relationship network.

And the crypto industry itself is a highly cross-border industry with extremely fast personnel turnover and widespread remote collaboration. Many professional relationships are not maintained entirely by a unified set of institutions. Industry credit, connections, endorsements, and reputation are often another set of invisible rules.

So a person who had worked in the industry for nine years, had done Stellar, Solana, and Ethereum events, and ultimately became a Crypto VC Partner, after a serious conflict with her institution, still publicly claimed she feared being blacklisted by the industry;

She even wrote despairingly in her final public post that she knew the final outcome of this matter might be very bad for her, and even mentioned death. The two sides had originally been going through legal mediation procedures, but in the end Hsin-Ju lost