Tron Foundation founder and CEO Justin Sun reportedly appear to have received a relief grant up to the tune of over $2 million from the United States government as part of relief grants to shield small businesses from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a Tuesday post on the Tron platform’s Chinese WeChat channel, the relief grant which is only awarded to businesses in the United States is specifically for employee salary and will not be paid back.
Matthew Graham, chief executive of Beijing-based, Sino Global Capital, a blockchain investment firm first broke the news on Twitter, with both the Tron Foundation and Justin Sun yet to make the allegedly received relief grant official.
According to the WeChat post, 17 million yuan (appr. $2.3 million) has already been paid out to Tron in the first batch with the other still to be paid in the future.
We need to talk about this. In China Justin Sun appears to be claiming that Tron successfully applied for COVID-19 small business relief money from the United States government. pic.twitter.com/B3EKQHJLpD
— Matthew Graham (@mattysino) May 6, 2020
While Graham is of the impression that the relief grant would appear to Chinese investors as a show of U.S government trust in Sun’s project, there are also speculations that the Tron CEO is at it again.
According to Adam Cochran, Partner at Metacartel Ventures, the relief grant may have been awarded to any of the United States-based entities operated by Justin Sun, and not directly to the Tron Foundation as claimed in the WeChat post.
Does Tron have a US entity directly? Seems more likely that this is for BitTorrent or Poloniex or SteemIt and Justin is vaguely representing it as Tron for sake of the publicity like always.
— Adam Cochran (@AdamScochran) May 6, 2020
While it appears that Tron has a U.S registered entity in San Francisco, Tron Protocol Inc., Justin Sun also owns a majority share in other crypto-related U.S entities including Bittorent, Poloniex, and the recently acquired platform, Steemit.
Other speculations include whether Tron Protocol Inc. has enough employees to be able to secure such an interest-free emergency funding, even though several small businesses are reportedly facing a challenge to secure these loan facilities.
