The Death Certificate of the Coroner of San Bernardino County, California, confirms that Hsin-Ju Chuang, former partner of the cryptocurrency venture capital company Hack VC, has died by suicide. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) stated that the investigation is ongoing.
On the evening of August 24th, at 9:47 pm, CHP received a report and went to the southbound lanes of Interstate 15, south of Field Road, in the Harvard area east of Barstow, California. CHP found 37-year-old Hsin-Ju Chuang, a resident of North Las Vegas, dead in a car and pronounced dead on the scene.
A spokesperson for CHP has mentioned that the investigation into Hsin-Ju Chuang’s death is still ongoing, and currently, there is no other information available to be disclosed.
According to CoinDesk, on August 23rd, Hsin-Ju Chuang posted a lengthy article on the X platform. She mentioned that she had refused to reach a settlement with Hack VC because the terms of the settlement required her to remain silent about her experiences at the company. She stated that she had fired her lawyer and planned to release all evidence of her time at Hack VC on August 26th.
In her post, Hsin-Ju Chuang revealed that during the organization of the Hack VC annual summit and related events in South Korea, she worked 13 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. She calculated her weekly working hours to be between 78 and 84 hours. She mentioned that she had already been diagnosed with thyroid disease and severe insomnia but was still required to continue working.
On the same day, Hack VC responded on the X platform, stating that there were “significant differences” between their understanding of the events and Hsin-Ju Chuang’s claims. The post was later deleted. A spokesperson for Hack VC told CoinDesk that the deletion was due to the increasingly hostile online responses directed towards Hsin-Ju Chuang, and the company did not want their statement to bring more attention or negative impact on her.
Co-founder and managing partner of Hack VC, Alexander Pack, posted on the X platform on September 23rd, stating that the company had not been in direct contact with Hsin-Ju Chuang for over 10 months and was “unaware of the circumstances of her death.”
According to Hsin-Ju Chuang’s LinkedIn profile, she founded the blockchain events and developer community organization, Dystopia Labs, and had served as the growth lead for blockchain networks Stellar and Solana. She joined Hack VC in 2021 as a venture partner and was promoted to partner and platform lead in 2025. She was well-known in the cryptocurrency industry for organizing events.
Her death did not immediately attract attention until September when local media outlet Hoodline reported on the incident, after which the news spread widely on cryptocurrency community social media platforms. Following the news of her death, several industry founders and former colleagues posted tributes on social media.
This is the second recent case of a Chinese executive within the cryptocurrency circle facing suspicion. Just before Hsin-Ju Chuang’s passing, on August 7th around 2 am, Chinese cryptocurrency investor Harry Chun Tak Yeh fell to his death outside the 30-story luxury residence “Jade Park” in the capital of Paraguay, South America.