Incoming president Donald Trump has a new crypto and AI “czar”: ex-PayPal COO David Sacks.
Trump introduced Sacks’ appointment Thursday in a publish on Truth Social, Trump’s social networking platform. “[Sacks] will work on a legal framework so the Crypto [sic] industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the US,” he wrote.
Sacks, a member of the “PayPal Mafia,” is a co-founder of Yammer, the interior communications instrument that Microsoft acquired for $1.2 billion in 2012. He’s additionally behind Craft Ventures, a VC fund that has backed startups, together with SpaceX, Reddit, and ClickUp.
In an interview with CNBC in 2017, Sacks mentioned he believed that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum fulfill the “original vision” of PayPal: making a “database of money” through which funds by no means go away the system.
Sacks’ views on AI and AI policymaking are much less apparent, although his insurance policies usually are decidedly right-leaning and deregulatory, which may properly imply a lighter contact than the outgoing Biden administration favored.