In less than 24 hours, the cryptocurrency community has given blockchain researcher ZachXBT nearly $1 million to cover his legal costs in a defamation case.ZachXBT, well-known for his research in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, is involved in a legal battle with Jeffrey Huang, also known as MachiBigBrother on Twitter.
On June 16, Huang tweeted that he has sued ZachXBT for defamation, charging him with tarnishing his reputation by making untrue claims.Huang didn’t go into detail about those claims, however ZachXBT released an article in June 2022 with the title: “22,000 ETH Embezzled and Over Ten Projects Failed: The Story of Machi Big Brother (Jeff Huang)”.ZachXBT said in the paper that Huang had started “over 10 failed pump and dump tokens and NFT projects.”
On June 17, ZachXBT responded to the lawsuit in a series of tweets, labeling it “baseless” and a “attempt to chill free speech.”In order to help his supporters with the legal costs, which he estimates could “easily exceed” $1 million, he set up a contribution wallet address.
As “the price” of honesty, he continued, the lawsuit “is sickening,” but he “knew one day” it would materialize.He tweeted, “The price of stating the truth is that sometimes people don’t like what you say.ZachXBT received donations from several crypto industry leaders, who also lauded him for his work in the crypto and Web3 sectors.In a tweet praising ZachXBT and urging him to “keep the industry transparent,” Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, also promised that Binance will “contribute $50K” toward ZachXBT’s legal costs.
The co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, Jesse Powell, also thanked ZachXBT for “all that” he does and said that he would donate 10 ether, which is currently worth $17,294.30.
Sandeep Nailwal, the creator of Polygon, stated that ZachXBT is the “reason web3 is alive and flourishing,” and he pledged to donate 5 ETH, which is now equivalent to $8,645.35.ZachXBT received more than $1 million in donations just one day after tweeting the link to the donation wallet account.
According to a Cointelegraph article from October 2022, the French government used ZachXBT’s study to indict five people on suspicion of phishing scams involving the theft of $2.5 million worth of nonfungible tokens.