Connect with us

Crypto

FBI investigating disappearance of high-profile crypto investor’s father

Published

on

FBI investigating disappearance of high-profile crypto investor’s father

The FBI has joined an investigation into the suspicious disappearance of a Southern California grandfather, which his family believes could be tied to their success in the cryptocurrency business.

Federal authorities recently became involved in the probe for missing Rancho Cucamonga resident Naiping Hou, 74, who is the father of noted hedge fund and cryptocurrency investor Wen Hou. The son serves as the chief investment officer at Coincident Capital. In 2022, Wen Hou and his wife, who live in Las Vegas, contributed $1.1 million in cryptocurrency to the USC Keck School of Medicine to help fund research on heart disease.

Naiping Hou was last seen in his hometown on March 18, 2025. He was officially reported missing on May 4, 2025, after which detectives determined someone impersonated him using his cellphone for over a month.

“Possible foul play is suspected, as his bank accounts were depleted prior to law enforcement being notified about his disappearance,” the FBI officials said in a news release.

His loved ones previously told KABC that the kidnapping could be tied to the family’s success in crypto.

Advertisement
The FBI has joined local California investigators in the ongoing probe into the disappearance of 74-year-old Naiping Hou (pictured in both images), the father of hedge fund and cryptocurrency investor Wen Hou
The FBI has joined local California investigators in the ongoing probe into the disappearance of 74-year-old Naiping Hou (pictured in both images), the father of hedge fund and cryptocurrency investor Wen Hou (FBI)

“I miss him a lot,” Wen Hou said about his father in July 2025. “He’s sort of a guide to my life.”

In a previous LA Times interview, Wen Hou said he became concerned about his father in April 2025 when his text messages in the family group chat began to feel robotic. Naiping Hou became increasingly withdrawn through the messages, less communicative and refused to visit his grandchildren, he claimed.

Wen Hou’s concerns escalated around his father’s May 3 birthday when he began to suspect that someone else may have been controlling his phone. He said his father declined to travel to Las Vegas to see family and did not respond to calls. Instead of reacting warmly to a gift of handmade Chinese noodles sent to his Rancho Cucamonga home, a text from Naiping Hou’s phone simply read, “Yes I received it.”

The out-of-state son asked family friends to check on his father the following day. Upon arrival, they reportedly found the unopened noodle package left on the doorstep. Inside the home, they discovered that the residence appeared to have been largely cleared out, with all furniture removed and a poorly done interior paint job.

Investigators determined that someone had been using Naiping Hou’s phone to impersonate him and carry out extensive fraudulent bank transactions, including purchasing gold bars online. Wen Hou said that was unusual since his father was not tech-savvy and had never bought gold before.

A tip website Wen Hou created to find his missing father remains active, offering a $250,000 reward.

Advertisement

Anyone with information on Naiping Hou’s case is asked to contact their local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Crypto

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

Published

on

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

Advertisement

While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

Continue Reading

Crypto

An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Published

on

An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

Advertisement

Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

Continue Reading

Crypto

U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Published

on

U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.


Avatar photo

Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
More by Ruth Prickett

Advertisement

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending