On Thursday, ZachXBT, a cyber spy in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, realm, accused prominent Taiwanese musician and blockchain personality Jeff Huang, also known as Machi Big Brother, of misconduct in 10 different cryptocurrency projects. Put it. Machi Big Brother is known as an avid collector of non-fungible tokens of the rugged Ape Yacht Club outside Taiwan and collected an estimated $8.26 million at the peak of the crypto bull market last year.
This is wrong information. Had he not been Anon, I would have sued him for defamation.
— machi big brother (@machibigbrother) 16 June 2022
Although numerous, the main lead of the allegations was directed towards Huang’s alleged involvement in the 22,000 ether (ETH) stash that was raised during the initial coin offering for the token of Formosa Financial (FMF), a group of blockchain companies. is a Taiwanese Treasury Management Platform designed for 2018.
Following the ICO, the price of the FMF token declined sharply, partly due to the severe crypto bear market at the time. Jeff Huang served as an advisor to the company before eventually leaving his role. In 2019, Taiwanese news outlet Block Tempo reported that Formosa Financial merged with Philippines-based crypto exchange CEZEX and ICO crowdfund syndicate Katalyse.io.
As reported by ZachXBT, on June 22, 2018, just three weeks after the FMF ICO, two withdrawals of 11,000 ETH were made from Formosa Financial’s Treasury wallet. At the same time, several executives at Formosa Financial reportedly authorized share buybacks of the company.
There is significant uncertainty regarding the said 22,000 ETH outflow. ZachXBT alleged that the funds first went to George Hsieh, former CEO of Formosa Financial, and Jeff Huang, and then to wallet addresses allegedly linked to their associates. However, the DeFi spy did not back up their claims with evidence as to how they linked the said addresses to Jeff and George.
On-chain data can only confirm that there were two withdrawals of 11,000 ETH from Formosa Financial Treasury on June 22, 2018. To establish a connection between a blockchain transaction and a real-world recipient, either additional know-your-customer (KYC) or doxing information would be required. For example, such a link can be established by comparing the recipient’s address with Twitter Verified (where ID verification is required), with the user’s profile displaying the said address. However, such evidence was not present in ZachXBT’s analysis.
Huang, whose public wallet came online only about two years ago, has characterized ZachXBT’s allegations as misinformation. Cointelegraph was not able to independently verify Huang’s alleged role in other projects as the DeFi spy report did not present Huang with the KYC information required to add wallet addresses. However, Huang did make the following comments regarding Mithril and Cream Finance – both of which are projects mentioned in ZachXBT’s report earlier this year in an interview with local news outlet Heaven Raven. The excerpt was translated by Cointelegraph:
“In 2018, I started [decentralized social media platform] Mithril. We also introduced community mining, encouraging users to upload pictures or videos of their mining rigs. But it was way ahead of time, and at the same time, we were unaware of many details. As a result, the price of the token fell. It was a pity, but we gained a lot of experience and then moved to Cream Finance.”
Kreme Finance, a leading DeFi lending platform, faced several flash loan exploits last year. It has vowed to repay users with protocol fees until their lost principal is returned. Regarding his involvement in the project, Huang said:
“At the time, we lost about $140 million during the exploit. But later, we tried to reimburse customers. And now Creme continues to be profitable. In November 2020, I handed over control of Cream Finance to Andre Cronje After that, due to the coronavirus pandemic, I mostly stayed at home and started focusing on non-fungible tokens.”
Jeff Huang denied the allegations against him in a Twitter post on Thursday, saying, “This is misinformation. If he hadn’t been Anon, I would have sued him for defamation.”
