As per reports from unnamed sources, a former FTX executive may have earned money for a charity by buying FTX tokens at a discounted rate (FTT) prior to them being made available to the public at $0.05 per unit. The tokens were apparently donated by the ex-head of staff at FTX. Polaris Ventures, a Swiss-based charity, went on to buy the FTT for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Anonymous Sources Say Polaris Ventures Gained its Wealth Mainly from the FTT Swap in 2019.

According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Tuesday, a charity connected to an FTX executive may have benefited from buying ftx tokens at a reduced cost. Anonymous sources told the WSJ that the charity was Polaris Ventures, Swiss, which claims to support artificial intelligence (AI) and effective altruism.

One AI organization Polaris Ventures supported was the Cooperative AI Foundation. The company received $15 million in funding to support their research and cause. WSJ reporter Alexander Saeedy citing anonymous sources, states that the former head of staff at FTX, Ruairi Donnelly, purchased tokens of FX (FTT), at a $0.05 discount rate. This was reportedly the current employee discount of FXX at the time.

Sources allege that Donnelly used $562,000 of his own salary to pay for the FTT fee. Saeedy’s report states that Donnelly then donated the funds to the charity as a grant. Polaris says that “the foundation made millions of dollars selling the tokens after they began publicly trading at $1 in 2019 and 2020, while Donnelly was still working at FTX”.

Donnelly’s lawyer claimed that the FTT was not part of FTX and was meant to pay unpaid wages to his client. “To be absolutely clear, the FTT that Mr. Donnelly directed to be donated in his name to Polaris was not FTX funds,” the lawyer said. The lawyer also stated that $30 million was needed to fund the litigation. Polaris funds were held in FTX and the foundation is one of the largest holders in the FTX Chapter case.

Additional anonymous sources in the report confirm that the FTT swap in 2019 was responsible for a large portion of the wealth created by the foundation. The same sources found that Donnelly is presently trying to sell Chapter Claims for a fraction of their value.

What do you think about the Polaris Ventures reports on the FTT transaction and case in 2019? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

jamie redmann

Jamie Redman is a fintech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been a part of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He is interested in Bitcoin, decentralized applications, open source code, and the rise of disruptive protocols in the present day. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News.