Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
On the morning of December 6th Beijing time, US President-elect Trump announced that he will appoint David O. Sacks as the White House's AI and Cryptocurrency Supervisor. Now, let's unveil the illustrious resume of "Crypto Czar" David O. Sacks and delve into his story with Crypto.
David O. Sacks' Illustrious Resume
Trump stated, "In this position, David O. Sacks will be responsible for guiding the government's policymaking in the fields of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, two areas that are crucial to the future competitiveness of the United States. David will strive to ensure that the US becomes the undisputed global leader in these two fields. He will defend internet free speech and lead us away from the biases and censorship of big tech companies. He will also work to build a legal framework that provides the clarity the cryptocurrency industry has long sought, allowing it to thrive in the US. In addition, David will chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology."
Trump further introduced David O. Sacks' illustrious resume: Over the past 25 years, David O. Sacks has been an extremely successful entrepreneur and investor, creating and investing in some of the most iconic companies in Silicon Valley. He was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) during the founding of PayPal, and was also a member of the legendary "PayPal Mafia" (a group of former PayPal employees who later developed or founded other tech companies). Subsequently, David O. Sacks founded the enterprise software company Yammer, which was later acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion. He then founded the venture capital firm Craft Ventures in San Francisco. David O. Sacks is also the co-host of the top technology podcast "All-In Podcast", where he frequently discusses economic, political and social issues. David has the deep knowledge, rich business experience, outstanding wisdom and pragmatic attitude to lead America to glory in these two key technology fields."
Additionally, according to Bloomberg, David O. Sacks played a key role in supporting Trump's fundraising from tech industry donors. He is also closely associated with Vice President-elect JD Vance.
It is worth noting that David O. Sacks served as an executive at PayPal in its early days alongside Musk, and is also an investor in Twitter. Musk and David O. Sacks also co-hosted a billionaire dinner in April this year with the theme of "opposing Biden".
David O. Sacks' Early Unwavering Belief in Crypto
David O. Sacks' early interviews reveal his deep insights and unwavering belief in the cryptocurrency industry.
In 2017, in an interview with CNBC, David O. Sacks said that as an early participant in PayPal, he had never thought of being interested in payments again after using PayPal. But Bitcoin is realizing the initial vision of PayPal to create a "new world currency". Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are now realizing this original vision. They operate in a decentralized manner (using a decentralized database called blockchain), while PayPal tried to operate in a centralized manner.
At the time, David O. Sacks pointed out that "it feels like we're witnessing the birth of a new type of network. Some call it a decentralized network or a monetary internet." Bitcoin strengthens its scarcity through the combination of cryptography and economic incentives (cryptoeconomics).
When responding to the question of how ICOs and future SEC regulation will coordinate, David O. Sacks expressed the hope that the SEC will distinguish "protocol tokens" (which have actual utility in the software ecosystem and should not be treated as securities) from "asset tokens" (which are securities). Most ICO activities are conducted through protocol tokens. Better projects have already worked to build their tokens, so they are not securities. However, David O. Sack also said he believes asset tokens (traditional asset tokens) will soon emerge.
Regarding whether digital assets and tokenization pose a long-term threat to traditional venture capital, David O. Sacks told CNBC that it will certainly pose a challenge to venture capital, as venture capital firms that want to invest before ICOs will have to compete with angel investors to provide real value-add. Additionally, LP interests may be tokenized like most other illiquid assets.
David O. Sacks also pointed out the three main challenges facing cryptocurrencies at the time: scalability, slideware (only at the whitepaper, PPT stage), and regulation. He cited some of the most promising use cases so far, including store of value, payments, crowdfunding, file storage, identity management and authentication, prediction markets, custody, chain of ownership, notary chains, provenance, and supply chains.
What is David O. Sacks' Connection to Crypto?
As early as 2018, David O. Sacks joined the advisory board of the decentralized exchange protocol 0x. At the time, 0x was also partnering with the digital securities platform Harbor, which was also part of the Craft Ventures portfolio and helped incubate Harbor. Harbor provided a blockchain-backed digital securities platform for compliant fundraising, investor management, and liquidity. Later, in February 2020, Harbor was acquired by digital asset custodian BitGo. In an interview with CNBC, David O. Sacks said that Harbor solved the compliance issues of asset tokenization, providing blockchain with a huge opportunity to bring more liquidity and transparency to private securities.
Regarding Craft Ventures, this is the venture capital firm co-founded by David O. Sacks, primarily investing in the B2B software investment field, and has successfully raised multiple funds. Craft Ventures' first fund raised $350 million. In October 2019, Craft Ventures completed the fundraising for its second fund, with a committed capital of $500 million. In November 2023, Craft Ventures raised $1.3 billion through Craft Ventures IV and Craft Ventures Growth II funds.
It is worth emphasizing that David O. Sacks has also led investments in Airbnb, Meta, Reddit, Slack, X, Uber, and xAI. In the Crypto field, David O. Sacks has led Craft Ventures' investments in crypto asset management company Bitwise and digital securities platform Harbor. In addition, Craft Ventures also led the seed round financing of DeFi protocol Set Protocol in 2018 (Set Protocol announced in April 2023 that it will cease development and relinquish multi-sig ownership rights), invested in the blockchain-based decentralized mapping network Hivemapper together with Multicoin in April 2022, and participated in the investment in the Web3-friendly entertainment company Superplastic in February 2023.
Also in 2018, David O. Sacks, representing Craft Ventures, announced an investment in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin. Multicoin was one of the early investors in Solana, leading a $20 million funding round for Solana in July 2019.
David O. Sack is also a staunch Solana holder. Fast forward to December 2023, David O. Sacks clarified that he did not sell Solana after the FTX incident, and bluntly stated that "one of the dumbest attacks on me this year has been the claim that I dumped my Solana (SOL) tokens on retail. If that were true, they should be rolling in it by now. Congrats to all the SOL holders."
Rewind two years, David O. Sacks also discussed the prospects of Solana in depth on his "All-In Podcast". He mentioned that many elites in Silicon Valley are very optimistic about Solana, believing it could ultimately surpass Ethereum. Even if this vision is not fully realized, Solana is fully capable of becoming the third in Crypto.
