ZachXBT Gets Sued, Community Donates Over $600K in Hours

One of the most popular on-chain crypto sleuths, going by the Twitter handle ZachXBT, said he was being sued for an article he posted last year.

The researcher said he is not wealthy, unlike the person suing him, and needs the community’s support for his defense. That support has been quite impressive so far.

• ZachXBT took to Twitter yesterday evening to inform that he was being sued by “MachiBigBrother” for an article published a year ago. The story itself names Jeff Huang (Machi), who ZachXBT described as a “former Taiwanese-American musician and tech entrepreneur who embezzled 22,000 ETH from Formosa Financial in 2018.”
• It goes in-depth explaining how Huang managed to defraud investors by launching “over ten failed pump and dump tokens and NFT projects.”
• Huang has now filed a defamation lawsuit against ZachXBT, which the latter described as “baseless and an attempt to chill free speech.”
• The researcher further defined the lawsuit as a “classic David & Goliath story” due to the supposed wealth difference between the two parties.
• He believes his defense could exceed $1 million, which is why he created a crypto donation address to “assist with legal costs.”

3/ I am creating a donation address to assist with legal costs associated with the defense of this matter, which could easily exceed $1m USD.

All leftover funds will be returned on a pro rata basis to contributors.

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) June 16, 2023

• On-chain data suggests that the wallet itself has received nearly $600,000 worth of crypto in 14 hours after publishing the tweet (as of writing these lines). It has $300,000 in ETH, $180,000 in USDC, $67,000 in USDT, and more.
• Additionally, other members of the crypto community urged ZachXBT to create BTC wallets for those who do not use EVM chains.