Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has received more than $1 million in donations from the crypto community in just 24 hours to cover his attorneys in a defamation lawsuit.
ZachXBT, known for his investigative work in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, has been embraced in a legal battle with Jeffrey Huang, better known on Twitter as MachiBigBrother.
On June 16, Huang tweeted that he had filed a defamation lawsuit against ZachXBT, alleging that he had damaged his reputation through false allegations.
While Huang did not specify the allegations, in June 2022, ZachXBT published an article titled: 22,000 ETH Stolen, Over a Dozen Projects Fail: The Machi Big Brother (Jeff Huang) Story. In the article, ZachXBT accused Huang of launching "more than 10 failed pump and dump token and NFT projects.” In response to the lawsuit in a series of tweets on June 17, ZachXBT called the lawsuit “baseless” and an “attempt to suppress free speech.”
He set up a donation wallet address for his followers to assist in paying for legal fees, which he believes could "easily exceed" $1 million. He added that the lawsuit was "disgusting" but he "knew it would happen someday" because it was the "price" of being honest. "The price of telling the truth is sometimes people don't like what you say," he tweeted. Several cryptocurrency executives donated to ZachXBT and praised his work in the cryptocurrency and Web3 industries.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, praised ZachXBT in a tweet, telling him to “keep the industry transparent” and promising that Binance would “donate $50,000” toward his legal fees.
Jesse Powell, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, also thanked ZachXBT for "everything" he did and said he would donate 10 ETH, approximately $17,294.30 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal tweet ed that ZachXBT is “the reason web3 is alive and thriving,” and said he would be donating 5 ETH, which is roughly $8,645.35 at the time of writing.
Just a day after ZachXBT shared a link to his donation wallet address on Twitter, his donation crossed the $1 million mark.
