A former FTX executive’s foundation made millions of dollars off the company’s digital tokens while he was its chief of staff and is now trying to eke out a bit more from a frozen account on the exchange, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. While working at FTX and its closely tied trading firm Alameda Research, Ruairi Donnelly helped run a charitable foundation that promoted research in effective altruism and artificial intelligence, topics of shared interest to him and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. One of the first employees at Alameda, Mr. Donnelly became the chief of staff of FTX as the exchange launched in 2019 and introduced its own currency called FTT, a digital coin for use on the new platform. At the time, FTX offered early employees like Mr. Donnelly a deal to buy its FTT tokens for 5 cents each, weeks before trading opened to the public at an initial price of $1. Donnelly took advantage of the company’s offer and requested that $562,000 of his salary be exchanged into FTT, worth the equivalent of 11.2 million tokens, according to his lawyer. FTX then sent the tokens at his request as grant to a Switzerland-based charity he co-founded, known today as Polaris Ventures, according to the foundation’s financial statements. The foundation made millions of dollars selling the tokens after they began trading publicly at $1 in 2019 and 2020, while Mr. Donnelly was still working at FTX, according to people familiar with the matter and the foundation’s financial statements.
