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United States President-elect Donald Trump named former PayPal operating chief and now podcaster David Sacks as his lead policy adviser on artificial intelligence and crypto.
“David O. Sacks will be the ‘White House A.I. & Crypto Czar,’” Trump wrote in a Dec. 6 post on his social media platform Truth Social, citing two areas that he called “critical to the future of American competitiveness.”
“He will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.,” Trump added.
Part of Sacks’ role will be to “safeguard” online speech and “steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship,” Trump wrote.
He added that Sacks will also lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.
Sacks was an early executive at payment giant PayPal and co-founded the business social network platform Yammer, which Microsoft bought for $1.2 billion in 2012. He is more recently known for co-hosting the business-focused All Inpodcast and co-founding the venture capital firm Craft Ventures.
Trump’s appointment of Sacks shows the president-elect’s team is rewarding high-profile business leaders who supported his campaign. Sacks has been a major Trump backer this year, hosting a campaign fundraiser that collected $12 million.
Trump strongly embraced the crypto industry in his campaign with promises to make the US “the world capital of crypto,” which in turn saw him garner millions of dollars in backing from industry executives.
He’s appointed other pro-crypto backers like Elon Musk to advisory roles and, on Dec. 4, picked the pro-crypto Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, which industry executives hope will stem the agency’s enforcement actions against crypto.
Meanwhile, a memecoin promoted by Sacks earlier this year that features his name jumped 16,000% to a new high in the hours after Trump’s post.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-names-david-sacks-ai-crypto-czar
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