Blockchain detective ZachXBT sued by “Big Brother Ma Ji”: Received donations of over one million US dollars, supported by CZ and Justin Sun

ZachXBT, a blockchain detective, was sued by "Big Brother Ma Ji" for receiving over $1M in donations, with support from CZ and Justin Sun.

Author: André Beganski, Decrypt

Translation: Felix, BlockingNews

Last weekend, “Machi Big Brother” Jeffrey Huang filed a defamation lawsuit against blockchain detective ZachXBT, and received millions of dollars in donations from the cryptocurrency community to help him, with almost unanimous public opinion supporting ZachXBT. This article will detail the beginning and latest developments of this event.

On June 17th, Huang announced on Twitter that he had filed a defamation lawsuit against ZachXBT in the Western District Court of Texas in the United States. ZachXBT responded by saying that Huang’s lawsuit against him was baseless, and that he would fight back to defend freedom of speech.

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The reason for the incident dates back to a year ago. In June 2022, ZachXBT published an article accusing Huang of launching dozens of “garbage” projects, including Mithril (MITH), Formosa Financial (FMF), Machi X, Cream Finance (CREAM), and Swag Finance (SWAG), and embezzling millions of dollars worth of Ethereum from Formosa Financial, a cryptocurrency asset management platform co-founded by Machi, which has since gone bankrupt. To support funding, Huang strongly protested and persuaded ZachXBT to delete negative articles, but ZachXBT did not accept this “kindness.”

“Jeffrey Huang’s lawsuit is disturbing, and this could be a ‘David and Goliath story.’ My understanding is that Huang is very wealthy, but I am not, and he is trying to use his money to shut me up. The legal defense costs of this lawsuit are likely to exceed $1 million.” Due to the disparity in financial resources, ZachXBT posted a wallet address to seek help from the cryptocurrency community.

Subsequently, ZachXBT immediately received the support of the community, receiving more than $1 million in donations from multiple cryptocurrency companies or practitioners within one day. According to Nansen data, ZachXBT’s wallet received funds from wallets associated with exchanges such as Binance, Bitfinex, Bybit, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Uniswap, and 1inch, with the value of multiple transactions ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.

Among them is a donation from Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng (CZ), who encouraged ZachXBT to “keep fighting” and “maintain industry transparency.” This move comes as Binance and CZ are working to respond to a lawsuit filed by the US SEC.

Tron founder and Huobi advisor Sun Yuchen also donated $10,000 worth of stablecoin True USD to ZachXBT and emphasized the detective’s role in educating the cryptocurrency community.

In addition, crypto media Bankless, Coinbase Cloud protocol lead Viktor Bunin, crypto security firm CertiK, and Cosmos, among others, also participated in the donation.

Nansen Portfolio’s latest data shows that the wallet address where ZachXBT initiated the raise has transferred some of the donated tokens to an address starting with “0x3e7E,” and the remaining token net value is now less than $70,000. According to ZachXBT’s previous commitment, the remaining funds for his legal defense will be returned to the donors in proportion to their donations.

Although Huang Licheng tweeted, “I just hope ZachXBT apologizes and any compensation received will be donated to charity,” he also sold 19 NFTs, including BAYC, MAYC, Azuki, and CryptoPunks series, within a few hours. However, his lawsuit exposed ZachXBT’s name and place of residence, making the detective’s identity public.

In fact, for many years, ZachXBT has been a well-known anonymous crypto KOL who is skeptical of various crypto projects and on-chain events, exposes wrongdoers, warns of potential scams, and shares vulnerabilities with crypto enthusiasts on Twitter.

As ZachXBT’s lawsuit with Huang Licheng continues to heat up, the Web3 community seems to be gearing up to support “crypto justice warriors” like him, sending their assets to those who are committed to positively impacting crypto and who have not previously demanded high returns.

BlockingNews will continue to follow the future direction and ultimate outcome of the lawsuit.

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