Crypto sleuth ZachXBT raises $600,000 amid lawsuit, Binance.US will keep assets separate from Binance

Crypto sleuth ZachXBT sued in defamation case

An independent crypto detective who goes by the pseudonym ZachXBT has raised more than $600,000 in crypto after being sued for defamation in US District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Jeffrey Huang, also known as Machi Big Brother, filed a lawsuit claiming ZachXBT defamed him last year in a post on his blog Medium.com alleging that Huang embezzled 22,000 Ether worth almost $38 million at the time from crypto management firm Formosa Financial.

The lawsuit argues that the claims about the “plaintiff’s supposed criminal conduct are categorically false” and that ZachXBT sought to profit at the expense of Huang’s reputation.

ZachXBT reponded to the lawsuit on Twitter, saying: “This is a classic David & Goliath story. My understanding is that Machi is very wealthy. I am not. He is using his money to try silence me. I’m asking for your help so this doesn’t happen & the truth survives.” The tweet included a donation address to assist with legal costs.

Binance, SEC reach tentative deal on Binance.US assets

Binance, Binance.US and the US Securities and Exchange Commission reached a tentative agreement to ensure only Binance.US employees can access customer funds.

The proposal, which must be agreed to by the judge overseeing the case in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, would require Binance.US to guarantee that no officials of global exchange Binance Holdings have access to private keys for its various wallets, hardware wallets or root access to Binance.US’s Amazon Web Services tools.

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The proposal follows an SEC motion to freeze all Binance.US assets while it pursues the exchange on securities-related charges. Binance.US last week asked the judge to reject that proposal because the company’s “operations would grind to a halt.”

Crypto payments platform Wyre closing amid crypto winter

Wyre, a San Francisco-based crypto payments company is closing after about 10 years, it said in a blog post, citing current crypto bear market conditions.

The company said it made the decision “to protect the best interest of our key stakeholders and customers,” and that it was not because of policies of any regulatory agencies.

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Assets can be withdrawn from the platform via Wyre’s dashboard until Friday, July 14, after which there will be a separate process to recover any remaining assets.

SEC official rejects criticism of crypto enforcement

A US Securities and Exchange Commission official dismissed criticism of the regulator’s current squeeze on cryptocurrency firms and instead chastised the sector for violating securities laws.

SEC Enforcement Director Gurbir Grewal said: “Typically you’d also see compliance, but we’re not seeing that in this space, so we had to change strategies,” Reuters reported from a Rutgers University and Lowenstein Sandler LLP event in New York on Friday.

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The SEC began by targeting initial coin sales as unregistered securities offerings, the news agency said, and has since increasingly gone after crypto firms acting as unregistered exchanges and broker-dealers.

France investigates Binance in money-laundering, canvassing case

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is being investigated for possible money-laundering and illegal canvassing of clients, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office.

A Binance spokesperson told Reuters the exchange had an “on-site visit last week by the relevant authorities” in France, adding that Binance “was fully collaborative and we met our obligations accordingly.”

Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Binance.US and its founder Changpeng Zhao, alleging it violated securities rules, misled customers, and more. Binance disputes the SEC charges.

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