(Reuters) -Newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will appoint former PayPal (NASDAQ:) Chief Operating Officer David Sacks as his “White House AI & Crypto Czar,” a further step toward an overhaul of American policy.
“He will work to create a legal framework so that the crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for and can thrive in the US,” Trump said in a post on his social media site Truth Social, without saying whether “czar” would was. an official title.
The crypto czar and other officials in the incoming Trump administration, such as the chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are expected to reform U.S. digital currency policy, along with a newly created crypto advisory board.
Trump’s tech backers generally want minimal regulation around artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, saying Washington would stifle growing innovative sectors with excessive regulations.
Elad Gil, an entrepreneur who has invested in companies like Airbnb and cryptocurrency platform Coinbase (NASDAQ:), called the selection of Sacks a “strong move” in a post on X. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on Czar @DavidSacks!”
“Sacks will likely have a mild regulatory impact, but not without some guardrails,” Steve Jang, founder of Kindred Ventures, told Reuters. Jang, together with Sacks, has invested in both cryptocurrency and AI startups.
He predicted that Sacks will prioritize regulating the way AI is used in certain critical applications, rather than focusing on regulating the development of the AI models themselves. This distinction was a major point of contention for Silicon Valley investors who fiercely opposed California’s failed SB 1047 law, which sought to regulate the development of AI models.
Trump announced Wednesday that he is nominating prominent Washington attorney and crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC, a move that is being celebrated by the industry.
Trump — who once labeled crypto a scam — embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” and accumulate a national supply of bitcoin.
Wednesday evening broke $100,000 for the first time, a milestone hailed even by skeptics as a coming-of-age for digital assets, as investors bet that a friendly US government will cement cryptocurrencies’ place in financial markets.
Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency asset manager Astronaut Capital, described the news as extremely bullish. “David has had a somewhat hands-on approach to crypto over the years, sometimes holding coins like solana. He seems much more technically and commercially competent in crypto than most would think,” Dibb said.
Sacks, 52, a native of South Africa, is the co-founder of venture capital firm Craft Ventures and an early leader of PayPal, a payment processing company acquired by eBay (NASDAQ:) in 2002.
Sacks is believed to be a member of the “PayPal mafia” of former employees and executives at the digital financial company, which also includes prominent Trump supporters Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:) who heads the artificial intelligence startup xAI, is a crypto fan and was appointed by Trump to co-lead the new Department of Government Efficiency. The advisory council to streamline government is nicknamed DOGE, the name of a cryptocurrency.
Sacks is also the former CEO of software company Zenefits and founded Yammer, a social network for business 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, revolutionized the internet.
“It feels like we are witnessing the birth of a new kind of web. Some people call it the decentralized web or the internet of money,” he said.
Trump said Sacks will also lead a White House science and technology advisory council.
