Donald Trump has picked a crypto bull to advise him on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy. On Thursday evening, the president-elect took to Truth Social to announce that he is appointing former PayPal COO David Sacks to the position of “AI and Crypto Czar of the White House.” Trump said that Sachs will also head the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
“David will lead the administration’s policies on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, two areas critical to America’s future competitiveness. David will focus on making America the undisputed world leader in both areas,” Trump wrote, adding that Sacks “will protect free speech online and move us away from bias and censorship by big tech.”
As a member of one of the president’s advisory councils, Sacks does not have to go through the normal Senate confirmation process required for cabinet members and heads of federal agencies. Sachs has no prior government experience. Instead, Trump emphasized his business credentials, pointing to his work at PayPal and later at Yammer, which Sacks founded in 2008 and Microsoft acquired in 2012 for $1.2 billion. David Sacks is also a close confidant of Elon Musk and provided some of the funds Musk used to buy Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. Sachs has been a vocal advocate for smaller government and less regulation, although he also pushed hard for the Biden administration to intervene when the Bank of Silicon Valley became insolvent in 2023.
“Where is Powell? Where’s Yellen?” Sacks tweeted before regulators moved to fully protect deposits at SVB. “Stop this crisis NOW. Announce that all depositors will be safe. Put SVB in the top 4 banks. Do it before the market opens on Monday, otherwise contagion will occur and the crisis will spread.”
Together with Paul Atkins, whom Trump has chosen to head the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Sacks is likely to change US policy on cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. Under the Biden administration, the federal government has struggled to regulate the crypto industry. Sacks, however, is an active supporter of the industry. He is also a major investor in Solana and other cryptocurrency-related businesses such as Multicoin Capital.
As for Trump, David Sacks’ appointment to his advisory board shows how much his position on cryptocurrencies has changed. As recently as 2021, he said that he thought bitcoin was “like a scam” and advocated for “very, very high” government regulation of the currency. This was before the crypto industry funneled $131 million into the 2024 elections to put 274 pro-cryptocurrency candidates into the House of Representatives and 20 candidates into the Senate. During his campaign, Trump promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.”
