ZachXBT fears legal costs to defend itself in the defamation lawsuit will "easily" exceed $1 million.
The blockchain network researcher; ZachXBT has received over a million dollars in donations from the crypto community in just over 24 hours. The funds will be used to pay his legal fees in a defamation lawsuit.
ZachXBT, known for its research work in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, has been embroiled in a legal dispute with Jeffrey Huang, better known on Twitter as MachiBigBrother.
On June 16, Huang tweeted that he had filed a defamation lawsuit against ZachXBT, accusing him of damaging his reputation with false accusations.
Although Huang did not specify those allegations, in June 2022, ZachXBT published an article titled: “ 22,000 ETH Embezzled and Over Ten Projects Failed: The Story of Machi Big Brother (Jeff Huang).”
In the article, ZachXBT accused Huang of launching “over 10 failed token and NFT pump and dump projects.”
Responding to the lawsuit in a series of tweets on June 17, ZachXBT called the lawsuit "baseless" and an "attempt to silence free speech."
He made a donation wallet address available to his followers to help with legal expenses, which he believes could "easily exceed" $1 million.
He added that the lawsuit "is disgusting," but that he "knew that one day" it would happen, because that is "the price" of honesty.
"The price of telling the truth is that sometimes people don't like what you say," he tweeted.
Several cryptocurrency executives donated to ZachXBT and praised him for his work in the cryptocurrency industry and Web3.
Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao praised ZachXBT in a tweet saying it is "maintaining industry transparency," along with a promise that Binance will "contribute $50,000" to its legal fees.
Jesse Powell, co-founder of Kraken, also thanked ZachXBT for "everything" it does, stating that he would donate 10 Ether, approximately $17,294.30 at press time.
Meanwhile, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal tweeted that ZachXBT is the “reason why web3 is alive and thriving,” stating that he will donate 5 ETH, approximately $8,645.35.
Just one day after ZachXBT shared the link to the donation wallet address on Twitter, it surpassed the million dollar mark.
In October 2022, Cointelegraph reported that French authorities had used the ZachXBT investigation to charge five people suspected of stealing $2.5 million worth of non-fungible tokens through phishing scams.😱
