- The crypto community, along with prominent names in the industry like Changpeng Zhao of Binance and Jesse Powell of Kraken, have pledged to come to ZachXBT’s aid.
- The funds in ZachXBT’s wallet address have surpassed $1 million for his legal fees against the lawsuit.
- The on-chain sleuth claimed he knew this would happen one day as it was fated to be the price of honesty.
Jeffery Huang, also known as ‘Machi Big Brother’ on Twitter, announced that he had filed a lawsuit against the famous on-chain sleuth, ZachXBT, for the defamatory publication released in 2022 on a Medium account.
On June 16, Machi Big Brother reminded the crypto community of the injury that his reputation suffered due to ZachXBT’s Medium article about him last year; the plaintiff—Jeff Huang—said that he had filed a defamation lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
“I look forward to proving through the lawsuit that @ZachXBT unlawfully defamed me,” Huang said.
Shocked by this lawsuit, the blockchain investigator responded to the case in a thread on Twitter, announcing that this was a display of wealth by Huang because he, ZachXBT, was not as rich as the plaintiff.
The article in question, which led to the lawsuit, was published in June 2022, titled ‘22,000 ETH Embezzled and Over Ten Projects Failed: The Story of Machi Big Brother (Jeff Huang)’, discussed how the plaintiff had stolen 22,000 ETH from Formosa Financial in 2018.
According to the article, Jeffrey Huang had launched ten failed pump-and-dump tokens and NFT projects. Formosa Financial witnessed a decline when George Hsieh—the co-founder—made two withdrawals of 11,000 ETH each from the treasury wallet in 2018.
The article maintained that George Hsieh had acted as the sole director of Formosa Financial, pushing a share buyback through himself. Shortly after, the co-founders Jeffrey Huang, George Hsieh, and Yalu Lin relinquished their positions at Formosa Financial, leaving others to run the company.
Back to the present, in light of the defamation lawsuit filed against him, ZachXBT pleaded with the crypto community to assist him in raising $1 million, which he believed would be needed to combat the lawsuit.
“I am creating a donation address to assist with legal costs associated with the defense of this matter, which could easily exceed $1M,” the on-chain detective said.
In response to his request for help, the CEO of the crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), lauded ZachXBT for his contribution to the transparency of the crypto industry and promised him $50,000 for his legal fees.
Additionally, the co-founder of Kraken, Jesse Powell, also pledged his support to the blockchain detective’s legal fight, announcing that he would also donate 10 ETH worth $17k to ZachXBT.
Since the announcement of the request for donations, the crypto industry has actively rallied behind ZachXBT, and the amount in the wallet address has since surpassed the $1 million target set by ZachXBT; this benevolent feat was achieved in over 24 hours.
Conclusion
ZachXBT stated that he planned to defend free speech against Machi Big Brother in court. The blockchain detective likened the case to that of David and Goliath, where the plaintiff uses his affluence to topple free speech and silence ZachXBT.
