Zhao will prove in court that Binance is not using a Ponzi scheme

A closer examination revealed that the publication did seem to be “yellow”. The fact is that the article was published in Chinese on July 6 in the 250th issue of Modern Media and had a reference to the original article in Bloomberg Businessweek. And that title was not so big – “Can Crypto’s Richest Man Stand the Cold?”. And not a word about Ponzi.

CZ did not tolerate such literary mayhem and rightly demanded an apology, retraction, and compensation. Besides, one thing the publisher wasn’t wrong about was that they deal with a wealthy crypto community member who can hire the most expensive lawyers.

They immediately upped the ante by mentioning in the lawsuit about the publisher’s influence (a Chinese subsidiary of Bloomberg), its large audience, and the resonance that caused material and moral damage to Zhao’s image. In a separate statement, Changpeng Zhao sued Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Inc. with “defamatory statements” allegations.

It should be said that the case may not go to trial if Modern Media agrees to meet all of the plaintiff’s demands as part of a pre-trial settlement. Verbally such agreements were reached, and the provocative material could have been already removed. However, according to other sources, the article’s title was simply changed to “Mysterious Changpeng Zhao” in the Chinese press.

“Haha, it turns out that The Coinomist is no better than Bloomberg if they leave that damn clickbait in the headline!” Well, first of all, yes. And for second of all, no.

“Yes”, because we haven’t grown to Bloomberg’s scale yet, so we can’t be much better than them a priori. And “No” because the court practice is set up so that if you try to sue someone for libel, it is your defendant who will be protected by the presumption of innocence. This means that it will not be up to him/her to prove his/her non-involvement. You will have to convince the High Court that the defendant’s statement was defamatory.

As we already know, the publisher only referred to the Ponzi scheme in the article’s title. So, it is automatically up to Changpeng Zhao’s lawyers to somehow prove that the Binance scheme itself is not a pyramid scheme.

It reminds us of the incident with the lawsuit against the musician Yuri Shevchuk, who said on stage that “the motherland is not the president’s ass”. Now it looks like the state officials offended by this statement must prove that the motherland is the president’s ass. Otherwise, where was Yuri Shevchuk wrong?

But in all seriousness, the parties will probably prefer to settle this conflict amicably, and CZ will receive some financial compensation for the inconvenience caused.