A throwback article just came back to haunt one of the crypto industry’s favorite crypto investigators. ZachXBT, a popular crypto on-chain sleuth recently got slapped with a defamatory lawsuit over an article he published last year. 

Around a year ago, ZachXBT published an article accusing Jeffrey Huang aka MachiBigBrother, of embezzling crypto assets using various methods ranging from failed pump and dump tokens to NFT projects. The article quickly gained widespread attention at the time, but it has been largely forgotten up until this point. 

Jeffrey Huang, known online as Machi Big Brother, is a former Taiwanese-American musician and tech entrepreneur. 

Huang has now filed a defamation lawsuit against ZachXBT, claiming the year-old article has damaged his reputation. Huang has insisted, at least according to a post that he published on Twitter, that ZachXBT’s charges are false and defamatory. As a result, he has decided to sue for defamation of character.

A cursory reading of the article, on the other hand, reveals that it is an investigational piece that goes into considerable detail. In the article, ZachXBT provided on-chain data to back up his claims. The crypto sleuth initially accused Machi Big Brother of embezzling 22,000 ETH from Formosa Financial, a treasury management platform built for blockchain companies in 2018. Furthermore, ZachXBT then provided a list of other projects like Machi X and Wifey Finance.

ZachXBT is not taking this lawsuit lying down as he’s come out swinging against what he calls a baseless lawsuit with “an attempt to chill free speech.” ZachXBT has asked his followers and subscribers to support him against censorship and cancel culture, ensuring the truth survives. 

He termed the whole situation as a “classic David & Goliath story,” and many have spoken out on social media defending his right to express his opinions. Brown Rudnick, a law firm with its headquarters in Boston famous for defending Johnny Depp in his case against his ex-wife Amber Heard, has agreed to represent ZachXBT in the lawsuit.

While lawsuits can be expensive to defend, ZachXBT says he will rely on donations from his followers to mount a proper defense. In this case, he says legal costs associated with the defense of this matter could easily exceed $1 million while providing a donation address. Donations have started to troop in. At the time of this writing, the address now contains more than $290,000. 

The outcome of this case could have significant implications for crypto media and regulations around defamation and libel for public figures in the crypto industry. 

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