President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he was nominating former PayPal COO David Sacks as “White House AI and Crypto Czar,” another step toward overhauling American politics.
“He will work on a legal framework so that the crypto industry has the clarity it demands and can thrive in the United States,” Trump said in a post on his social media site Truth Social, without specifying whether the “Tsar” was an official title.
The crypto czar and other officials in the new Trump administration, such as the chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are expected to reshape U.S. digital currency policy, along with advice newly created crypto advisory. Trump’s tech supporters generally want minimal regulation around artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, saying Washington would strangle growing innovative sectors with excessive rules.
Elad Gil, an entrepreneur who has invested in companies including Airbnb and cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, called Sacks’ choice a “strong decision” in an article on X. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said congratulated Sacks for X.
“Sacks will probably have a slight influence on regulation, but not without some safeguards,” Steve Jang, founder of Kindred Ventures, told Reuters. Jang has co-invested with Sacks in cryptocurrency and AI startups.
He predicted that Sacks would prioritize regulating how AI is used in certain critical applications instead of focusing on regulating the development of AI models themselves. This distinction was a key point of contention for Silicon Valley investors who vehemently opposed California’s bill SB 1047, which sought to regulate the development of AI models.
Trump announced Wednesday that he was nominating prominent Washington lawyer and crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC, in a move celebrated by the industry.
Trump – who once called crypto a scam – embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” and amass a national stockpile of bitcoin.
Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time on Wednesday evening, a milestone hailed even by skeptics as a coming-of-age for digital assets as investors bet on a friendly US administration to shore up crypto’s place -currencies on financial markets.
Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency asset manager Astronaut Capital, called the news extremely optimistic. “David has had a somewhat hands-on approach to crypto over the years, sometimes holding coins such as Solana. He appears to be much more technically and commercially knowledgeable about crypto than most realize,” Dibb said.
Born in South Africa, Sacks, 52, is a co-founder of venture capital firm Craft Ventures and an early executive at PayPal, a payment processing company acquired by eBay in 2002.
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Sacks is considered a member of the “PayPal Mafia” made up of former employees and executives of the digital finance company, including prominent Trump supporters Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
Musk, the Tesla CEO who runs artificial intelligence startup xAI, is a fan of crypto and was named by Trump as co-head of the new Department of Government Effectiveness. The advisory board tasked with streamlining government is nicknamed DOGE, the name of a cryptocurrency.
Sacks is also a former CEO of software company Zenefits and founded Yammer, a social network aimed at enterprise users. He was an early cryptocurrency evangelist, telling CNBC in a 2017 interview that he believed the rise of Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, was revolutionizing the internet.
“We feel like we’re seeing the birth of a new kind of web. Some have called it the decentralized web or the Internet of money,” he said.
Trump said Sacks would also lead a science and technology advisory council to the White House.
