Trump brings in Silicon Valley venture capitalist to head crypto strategy

On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of a new position, the White House AI and Crypto Czar, and that it would be headed by tech insider David Sacks. 

“David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas,” Trump said in a post from his personal social media site, Truth Social. 

The venture capitalist appears to be the cherry on top for Trump’s pro-crypto agenda, which has caused the market for Bitcoin — the crypto industry’s most ubiquitous and popular mint — to peak at over $100,000 a token. 

Sacks has been deeply involved with the tech industry throughout his professional career as a so-called angel investor. From stalwart companies like PayPal to AirBnB to surveillance firms like Palantir, Sacks has been at the forefront of bankrolling some of the most lucrative startups in Silicon Valley. 

As such, key insiders within the crypto industry have exalted Trump for the appointment. 

“Initial reactions from the crypto industry on [the] Sacks appointment has been positive. Given his purview as a venture capitalist, he’s seen a lot of the innovation in crypto and AI that has been stunted in growth due to various political or regulatory issues the past few years,” Ron Hammond, director of government relations at the Blockchain Association, told WIRED. 

“What remains to be seen is how much power the czar role will even have and if it will be more a policy driver position vs. a policy coordinator role.” 

The czar position would not require congressional approval if Sacks is classified as a “special government employee.” 

The move should be appealing for those in MAGA world, as Sacks is a longtime Trump loyalist: He runs in the same circles as right-wingers like billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, failed Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters and Vice President-elect JD Vance — whom he provided with $1 million in campaign funds during Vance’s Senate run in 2022. 

His involvement in this coalition of tech ghouls has engendered a particular brand of reactionary politics. A resident of San Francisco, Sacks was influential in ousting the city’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, whom he insisted was too soft on crime. 

“In the world created by D.A. Boudin’s policies, prosecutors learn not to charge, police learn not to arrest, citizens learn not to report, and all learn to live in fear,” Sacks wrote in a 2021 blog post attacking the left-wing prosecutor. This was despite violent crime rates falling below pre-pandemic levels during Boudin’s tenure.  

The successful recall of Boudin that Sacks helped spearhead can be seen as a microcosm of Silicon Valley’s more nefarious, right-wing politics. Be it either pushing back against criminal justice reform or opening the regulatory flood gates for crypto ponzi-schemes, Sacks and his ilk have theory of government which encourages private sector pilfering while neutering public sector reform. 

“Steeped in the inflammatory milieus of social media and Tucker Carlson demagoguery, Sacks and his fellow travelers often seem less to stand for anything than against the status quo—against criminal legal reform; against the public presence of homelessness; against a tradition of Democratic urban governance that, by indulging in identity politics, has failed to solve economic and social ills,” the tech journalist Jacob Silverman explained in a New Republic profile of Sacks. 

“They are angry, and they want the government, which they see as simultaneously incapable of doing much good, to work for them again.”