Ex-PayPal COO David Sacks is Trump’s new crypto and AI ‘czar’

In Brief

Incoming President Donald Trump has a new crypto and AI “czar”: ex-PayPal COO David Sacks.

Trump announced Sacks’ appointment Thursday in a post 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 so-called “PayPal Mafia,” is a co-founder of Yammer, the internal communications tool that Microsoft acquired for $1.2 billion in 2012. He’s also behind Craft Ventures, a VC fund that has backed startups including SpaceX, Reddit, and ClickUp.

In an interview with CNBC in 2017, Sacks said he believed that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum fulfill the “original vision” of PayPal: creating a “database of money” in which payments never leave the system.

Sacks’ views on AI and AI policymaking are less obvious, though his policies generally are decidedly right-leaning and deregulatory, which could well mean a lighter touch than the outgoing Biden administration favored.

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