(Reuters) – US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday said he was appointing former PayPal (NASDAQ:) Chief Operating Officer David Sacks as his “White House AI & Crypto Czar,” another step that towards a review of US policy.
“He will work on a legal framework so that the Crypto industry has the clarity that he has wanted, and can thrive in the US,” Trump said in a post on his social media site Truth Social. to say he was a “czar”. official title.
The crypto czar and other officials in the incoming Trump administration such as the chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are expected to reshape US policy on digital currency along with advice newly created crypto consultancy.
Trump's tech supporters generally want to see little regulation of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, saying Washington would stifle growing innovative sectors with too many regulations.
Elad Gil, an entrepreneur who has invested in companies such as Airbnb and the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase (NASDAQ: ), called Sacks' choice a “strong move” in a post on X. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X, “congratulations to czar @DavidSacks!”
“Sacks may have a light touch on regulation, but not without some guardrails,” Steve Jang, founder of Kindred Ventures, told Reuters. Jang has co-invested with Sacks in cryptocurrency and AI startups. .
He expected Sacks to prioritize regulating how AI is used in some critical applications instead of focusing on regulating the development of the AI models themselves. This separation was a major point of contention for Silicon Valley investors who strongly opposed California's unsuccessful SB 1047 bill, which sought to regulate AI model development.
Trump announced on Wednesday that he was appointing prominent Washington lawyer and crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC, in a move that marked 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 a national stockpile of bitcoin.
It broke $100,000 for the first time on Wednesday night, a milestone hailed even by skeptics as the future of digital assets as investors bet on a friendly US administration to solidify the role of cryptocurrencies in the financial markets.
Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency fund manager Astronaut Capital, said the news was extremely positive. “David has had a bit of a hands-on approach to crypto over the years, at times holding coins like solana. He seems to be much more technically and commercially adept at crypto than he would most people think,” said Dibb.
Born in South Africa, Sacks, 52, is a co-founder of venture capital firm Craft Ventures and an early leader of PayPal, a payment processing company acquired by eBay (NASDAQ:) in 2002.
Bags is believed to be a member of the “PayPal Mafia” of former employees and executives at the digital finance company that includes prominent Trump supporters Peter Thiel and Elon Musk .
Musk, the Tesla (NASDAQ: ) CEO who heads artificial intelligence startup xAI, is a crypto fan and was named by Trump as co-director of the new Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE is the nickname of the advisory board for streamlining the government, the name of cryptocurrency.
Sacks also served as vice president of software company Zenefits and founded Yammer, a social network for enterprise users.
He was an early evangelist of cryptocurrencies, telling CNBC in a 2017 interview that he believed the rise of bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, was changing the Internet.
“It feels like we are seeing the birth of a new type of web. Some have called it the decentralized web or the money internet,” he said.
Trump said Sacks will also lead a White House advisory council on science and technology.
