Trump appoints David Sacks as crypto and AI advisor
David Sacks is the first COO of PayPal and a well-known technology investor in Silicon Valley.
On the morning of December 6, 2024, the new US President Donald Trump announced the appointment of David O. Sacks to the position of "White House Crypto and AI Policy Advisor".
Mr. Trump said that this position will be responsible for supporting policy making on the development of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, two areas "important to the competitiveness of the United States". Mr. Sacks is also tasked with helping to form a legal framework for managing cryptocurrencies in the US to meet the aspirations of the industry.
In addition, Mr. Trump also appointed the former PayPal COO to lead the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
David Sacks is a well-known entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley technology community. He was the first COO of PayPal, the US payment giant. Sacks then started his own startups, including Geni and Yammer, which were acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012.
Sacks then became an angel investor, investing in now-famous startups like Airbnb, Facebook, Palantir Technologies, Scribd, SpaceX, Uber, and more, before founding his own venture capital fund, Craft Ventures, in 2017. He also contributed capital to Multicoin Capital, an incubator for projects in the Solana ecosystem.
According to RootData, Craft Ventures has invested in many crypto projects, including dYdX, Lightning Labs, River Financial, Kresus, Set Protocol, FOLD, Harbor, Handshake, Voltage, Galy, Lumina, and Rare Bits.
Sacks’ pro-crypto stance is extremely clear. In a statement released in July on X, the 52-year-old businessman directly asserted that the crypto industry needs a clear legal framework to continue to develop, which can only happen if Mr. Trump is elected President of the United States.
Notably, Mr. David Sacks was appointed as an advisor to the DEX exchange project 0x Protocol in 2021, so after the news that he was chosen by Trump as a crypto policy advisor at the White House, the price of the ZRX token skyrocketed by more than 35%. In 2018, Mr. Sacks also posted on X (Twitter) saying that he was "a fan of 0x".
ZRX price movement in the last 24 hours, screenshot from CoinGecko at 09:05 AM on 06/12/2024
As reported by Coin68, since being elected President of the United States in early November, Mr. Trump has made a series of moves to fulfill his commitment to "revive the crypto industry" in the United States during the election campaign. In addition to preparing to establish a crypto advisory board with representatives from major US cryptocurrency companies, Trump also wants to create a new position as a crypto policy advisor at the White House, who will act as an intermediary to coordinate crypto legal development between the President, Congress and financial regulators. Initially, the most traditional candidate for the position was former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, who took a progressive stance on crypto during his 2017-2019 tenure.
The list of pro-crypto officials appointed by Trump in the new administration so far includes:
- Scott Bessent, a pro-crypto fund manager, as Treasury Secretary;
- Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald (a company that custodians nearly $100 billion in US Treasury bills backed by Tether’s USDT stablecoin), as Commerce Secretary;
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former presidential candidate who announced his investment in Bitcoin, as Health and Human Services Secretary;
- Elon Musk as Secretary of Government Efficiency (DOGE);
- Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner and law firm executive with many crypto clients, as Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), replacing the departing Gary Gensler.
