ZachXBT worries that his legal costs for fighting the slander complaint could “easily exceed” $1 million.
In a little more than 24 hours, the cryptocurrency community has given blockchain researcher ZachXBT over $1 million in donations to cover his legal costs in a defamation lawsuit.
ZachXBT, well-known for his blockchain and cryptocurrency-related investigative work, is involved in a legal battle with Jeffrey Huang, also known as MachiBigBrother on Twitter.
ZachXBT was charged with defamation after Huang claimed in a tweet on June 16 that ZachXBT had harmed his reputation by making untrue claims.
Huang didn’t go into detail about the charges, however ZachXBT published 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, labelling 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 materialise.
He tweeted, “The price of stating the truth is that sometimes people don’t like what you say.
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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” towards ZachXBT’s legal costs.
Additionally thanking ZachXBT for “all that” he does, Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell announced he would be contributing 10 Ethereum ETH.
Sandeep Nailwal, the creator of Polygon, tweeted that ZachXBT is the “reason web3 is alive and flourishing,” and he promised to donate 5 ether (about $8,645.35) in response.
ZachXBT has already surpassed the $1 million milestone in donations just one day after tweeting the link to the donation wallet account.
