Sam Bankman-Fried’s charitable donations sought by FTX: Report

by Jeremy

FTX’s new administration is looking for to get well hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in donations made by the crypto alternate and its former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, stories the Wall Avenue Journal. 

On the finish of September, FTX’s charity arm, Future Fund, had dedicated greater than $160 million to over 110 nonprofit organizations, together with biotech startups and college researchers creating Covid-19 vaccines and dealing on pandemic research, in addition to nonprofit organizations in India, China and Brazil.

As per the report, Future Fund dedicated $3.6 million to AVECRIS, an organization engaged on a genetic vaccine platform, and one other $5 million had been donated to Atlas Fellowship for scholarships and high-school summer time applications in San Francisco.

A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried mentioned that charitable donations weren’t created from buyer deposits, however from buying and selling earnings.

The charity arm was introduced in February 2022 planning to deploy over $100 million in its first 12 months and attain as much as $1 billion in donations.

Regardless of the decline in crypto costs, donations had been saved. On Sep. 23, Future Fund’s Twitter profile introduced “a considerable fraction” of capital to be deployed on researches and initiatives engaged on danger administration for synthetic basic intelligence (AGI), with prizes as much as $1.5 million, in addition to 1000’s of {dollars} in rewards for many who “greatest critiques of our views” about the way forward for synthetic intelligence. 

Associated: Firms and traders could must return billions in funds paid by FTX

FTX’s donations to political events and candidates are additionally underneath investigation by United States prosecutors. Bankman-Fried was the second-largest “CEO contributor” to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential marketing campaign, with $5.2 million in donations. 

Clawback provisions might power companies and traders to return billions of {dollars} paid within the months previous to the crypto alternate’s collapse, Cointelegraph reported. FTX’s new administration says that “various recipients of contributions or different funds” have approached the corporate to return the funds.

On Jan. 4, Bankman-Fried pleaded not responsible to all felony expenses he faces regarding the collapse of the crypto alternate, together with wire fraud, securities fraud, and marketing campaign finance violations. Since Dec. 22, he has been underneath home arrest at his mother and father’ house in California.