The reason Hsin-Ju @hsinju died in the Mojave Desert has not yet been determined, but I think it's easy for people to fall into conspiracy theories.
Hsin-Ju Chuang, former partner and platform lead at Hack VC, was found deceased in her vehicle near an I-15 highway ramp in the Mojave Desert, California, on August 24, 2026, at the age of 37. The cause of death has not been disclosed.
According to public records from the San Bernardino County Coroner, at 9:47 p.m. on August 24, California Highway Patrol responded to a location south of Field Road on southbound I-15, where they confirmed the death of 37-year-old Hsin-Ju Chuang.
I-15 desert stretch from Barstow toward Nevada
However, as of now, the cause of Hsin-Ju’s death remains unclear, and the incident has not been classified as a criminal case.
This is currently widely speculated to be the result of her former company, Hack VC @hack_vc, using certain methods to physically remove him from the face of the earth.
But regardless, Hsin-Ju's death is a tragedy for crypto!!
The feud between Hsin-Ju and Hack VC
About a year ago, Hsin-Ju, who was employed at Hack VC, had a labor dispute with the company.
According to Hsin-Ju’s own public statement on August 24, she suffered from Graves’ disease, hyperthyroidism, and severe insomnia during her tenure at Hack VC, yet continued to take on high-intensity work, including a series of events during Hack Summit and Korea Blockchain Week.
Original post https://x.com/hsinju/status/2091571258869879015
She said she worked 13 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, and could only sleep 0 to 4 hours each night. The job was so painful and tormenting that Hsin-Ju even considered suicide.
She also accused Hack VC co-founder Alex Pack and partner Daniel Bulaevsky of pressuring her as she attempted to exit the project and leave the company, including alleged industry blacklisting.
Of course, all of these are unilateral allegations made by Hsin-Ju; however, Hack VC disagrees with Hsin-Ju’s claims, meaning each side has its own version of the truth.
From a positional standpoint, Hsin-Ju seems to play a significant role at Hack VC.
As an industry veteran, she began her career in growth at Stellar, joined the then-early-stage Solana team as head of growth in 2018, later founded Dystopia Labs and long-organized Ethereum developer events, served as head of growth at Fhenix, and ultimately became a partner and platform lead at Hack VC.
Welcome post by Alexander Pack, co-founder of HackVC, when Hsin-Ju joined https://x.com/alpackaP/status/1899108367072661597
From Hsin-Ju’s perspective, having spent many years deeply immersed in the industry, her core asset is essentially her network of industry relationships—such as conferences, project teams, developers, funds, media, investors, referrals, and endorsements—all of which together form the foundation of her professional value.
In traditional industries, the words "blacklist" might just be empty talk from management, but in industries like VC and Crypto—where relationships are critically important—the implications are fundamentally different.
Although crypto has always emphasized permissionlessness and decentralization on-chain, from the perspective of a practitioner or employee, her resume, funding relationships, industry reputation, and collaboration opportunities all exist off-chain.
In particular, the crypto VC space is a classic insider network, where many positions are not publicly advertised, and many project financings are not open to public bidding; numerous opportunities arise through internal referrals or personal connections.
While on-chain assets offer high exit freedom, off-chain professional relationships remain highly centralized. In other words, a wallet can come and go freely, but an individual’s livelihood in the crypto industry—especially in these core areas—cannot.
On the other hand, there is a very significant disparity in strength between the two sides.
Hack VC is a top-tier VC in the crypto industry, having invested in leading projects such as EigenLayer, Goldfinch, Mysten Labs (Sui), io.net, Elixir, and Berachain.
As of the third quarter of 2025, its AUM has reached approximately $700 million.
So for an individual, you're not just facing a company—you're facing the capital, network of connections, and industry credibility behind it.
This is why Hsin-Ju is so wary of so-called industry blacklists, as just a few phone calls from Hack VC, some background checks, and a label of being difficult to work with could have real consequences for Hsin-Ju’s career.
An agreement that can never be "reached"
According to Hsin-Ju, both parties' lawyers had been in contact for nearly a year, preparing to enter private mediation and settlement, but she ultimately dismissed her lawyer and refused to accept a settlement containing confidentiality terms from Hack VC.
Hsin-Ju publicly stated that she would rather receive $0 than accept a settlement in exchange for silence, and announced that she will disclose written evidence she retained during her tenure at Hack VC and the subsequent dispute on August 26, to substantiate her prior allegations regarding excessive work hours, threats of industry blacklisting, insurance handling, and subsequent negotiations.
Hack VC subsequently responded that the company had noticed her post and cares about her well-being, but there are significant discrepancies regarding the events, and due to privacy reasons, specific details will not be disclosed at this time.
Co-founder of HackVC, Alexander Pack, posted on social media yesterday that he has not had direct contact with Hsin-Ju for over 10 months, confirming their prolonged estrangement,https://x.com/alpackaP/status/2102758451390595098
Of course, there's no need to demonize standard business settlements—confidentiality clauses are very common in employment and commercial disputes and do not inherently indicate wrongdoing by either party.
From the perspective of the incentive structure, once Hsin-Ju rejects settlement and publicly discloses the aforementioned so-called evidence, the nature of the entire matter will change.
Actually, during the private mediation phase, this is an issue between the two parties' lawyers, but once she makes the evidence public, it escalates from a legal matter to a reputational one.
At this point, HackVC’s LPs, portfolio projects, other employees, and partners will all或多或少 be aware of this matter, and ultimately, it will或多或少 affect HackVC’s reputation.
It’s clear here that Hsin-Ju is extremely dissatisfied with the settlement terms proposed by HackVC and believes the conflict between the two parties has become irreconcilable. At this point, she wants to bring a dispute that could have remained private back into the public sphere.
So on August 24, she announced her rejection of the settlement and previewed the public disclosure of evidence on August 26.
But on the evening of August 24, she was found dead in the Mojave Desert.
These two time points are actually far too close together—so close that anyone viewing this timeline would naturally make a connection.
But associations are still just associations.
We currently have no evidence to establish a causal link between Hack VC, any of its management, or the labor dispute and her death.
She has previously publicly mentioned her Graves' disease, hyperthyroidism, and severe insomnia, and also said she experienced a suicide attempt.
Death may result from illness, accidents, environmental factors, or other circumstances we are not yet aware of.
Before forensic and police authorities provide more information, I believe the term "silencing" is essentially a conspiracy theory.
Why, after this incident, did everyone so naturally think of "silencing"?
A report released by Chainalysis in August this year showed that, as of June 30, 2026, 46 violent incidents targeting cryptocurrency holders have been publicly recorded globally, with 12 resulting in successful payments and over $30 million in cryptocurrency known to have been forcibly taken. Home invasions account for 37% of related incidents this year, while kidnappings account for approximately 52%.
Crypto industry wrench attack data chart
Image source:https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/violent-crypto-wrench-attacks-2026/
Although this data is not directly related to Hsin-Ju’s death, the risk of offline violence in crypto has truly existed within the industry’s collective experience.
In traditional financial systems, a person's wealth is typically separated by banks, custodial institutions, freezing mechanisms, and clearing systems.
Crypto removes these intermediaries, allowing money to cross half the globe in ten seconds, causing online attacks that previously occurred to gradually extend offline.
That means if I can't get your private key, I'll find the person who has it.
Precisely because this industry has seen numerous similar cases, when elements such as "public advocacy," "previewing evidence," "death on the same night," and "desert highway" appear together, the public automatically pieces them together into a complete story.
In fact, this story establishes a complete psychological logic, but that does not mean it holds up as evidence.
I even feel that Chen Jian’s earlier viewpoint—not to easily engage in fights, not to burn bridges, and understanding that the crypto world is governed by human relationships—is more valuable than various “100% guaranteed to be silenced” theories, because it represents a typical understanding of risk in the crypto space.
In the cryptocurrency industry, when serious conflicts of interest arise between individuals and companies, many professionals typically do not think of labor laws, judicial procedures, or corporate governance first, but instead prioritize securing an exit strategy for each other.
Because people subconsciously know that this industry has many punitive mechanisms outside of formal systems.
This penalty mechanism can mean denying you the next round of funding, slandering you within the community, or continuously draining your relational resources. These actions may not be illegal, and some may never be provable—but they can still determine whether you can continue to survive in this industry.
So the phrase “the江湖 is about relationships and social norms” actually reveals the real security mindset of many in the crypto industry: when systems aren’t reliable, people turn to personal relationships to manage risk.
Rational thinking
Let’s think rationally: from a financial perspective, Hack VC was not a fund on the brink of collapse, desperately fighting for survival—on the contrary, it was still clearly in a phase of expansion.
In 2024, Hack VC's AUM was approximately $425 million, growing to about $700 million by the third quarter of 2025, with committed capital reaching around $550 million by year-end. In 2025, it invested another $50 million across 29 deals, with 26 portfolio companies issuing tokens, and its early investment in Rail was acquired by Ripple for $200 million. Entering 2026, Hack VC continues to invest and lead new projects.
In other words, this is a VC that is still raising funds, making investments, expanding its team, and continuously engaging with LPs, project teams, and founders.
For such institutions, the most important asset is not the hundreds of millions of dollars on the balance sheet, but rather credibility.
So, from a purely risk-reward perspective, taking any extreme or even illegal actions to resolve a labor dispute with a former employee is an extremely poor business decision. The only potential benefit is silencing the former employee and avoiding negative publicity and reputational damage.
But once things come to light, you could face criminal investigations, lawsuits, LP inquiries, partners cutting ties, future fundraising being blocked, and even the entire fund’s reputation and the management team’s careers being destroyed.
The former is at most a reputational crisis, while the latter could directly become a survival crisis.
Moreover, VCs are different from many ordinary companies because their business is inherently built on long-term trust. Even if a labor dispute becomes extremely ugly, it can theoretically still be resolved through lawyers, compensation, arbitration, or public relations; but if criminal boundaries are truly crossed, the nature of the situation changes completely.
So, from the perspective of institutional rationality and economic interest, I find it hard to identify a reasonable motive for Hack VC to voluntarily assume such unlimited downside risk over a labor dispute; at least from an economic logic standpoint, this is not an easily viable explanation.
The death of Hsin-Ju, a sorrow for crypto
The crypto industry has always been a field of contradictions: while crypto outwardly promotes ideals such as decentralization, individual sovereignty, free exit, and "Code is Law," its off-chain world is highly centralized, not the idealistic utopia of DAOs.
A few funds control a large amount of early-stage capital, a few major conferences dominate industry visibility, a few exchanges control liquidity access, and a core group of builders, VCs, and KOLs form a network that is not as large as it might seem.
The technology is decentralized, but resource allocation remains highly centralized; Hsin-Ju is precisely someone who lives on-chain.
Whether as a platform lead, growth lead, event organizer, or connector between projects and capital, she is herself a node within this network of relationships.
The cryptocurrency industry itself is highly international, characterized by rapid personnel mobility and widespread remote collaboration. Many professional relationships are not entirely sustained by a single unified system; instead, industry credibility, networks, endorsements, and reputation often serve as another set of unwritten rules.
So a person with nine years of industry experience, who has organized events for Stellar, Solana, and Ethereum, and ultimately became a Crypto VC Partner, still publicly claims to fear industry blacklisting after a serious conflict with their institution;
Even in her final public post, she desperately wrote that she knew the outcome of this matter could be devastating for her, even mentioning death. The two parties were originally undergoing legal mediation, but ultimately, Hsin-Ju lost her life.
Although the cause of Hsin-Ju’s death has not yet been determined, how much truly reliable institutional protection has an industry that constantly promotes individual sovereignty and permissionlessness offered to an ordinary practitioner who refused to stay silent and was preparing to publicly confront the issue?
When a practitioner and an institution completely break ties, people first worry about whether they will pay a cost outside the system, rather than seeking to resolve the issue through the system.
Thus, making peace and not pushing things to the extreme have become the default survival strategy for many crypto workers.
This reaction itself, I believe, already exposes the massive governance issues within the cryptocurrency industry, and this incident has clearly become a health check report for the off-chain ecosystem of the crypto industry.
The death of Hsin-Ju, a sorrow for crypto.