On December 6, after announcing the appointment of Paul Atkins as SEC Chairman, Trump also appointed PayPal co-founder David Sacks as the "White House Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency Affairs Coordinator".
In his letter, Trump wrote, "In this important role, David will help the government develop policies in the fields of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, which are crucial to America's future competitiveness. His goal is to make the United States the undisputed global leader in these two areas.
David will work to protect free speech online and prevent the influence of bias and censorship by big tech companies. He will also drive the establishment of a clear legal framework to provide the long-needed clarity for the cryptocurrency industry, allowing it to thrive in the United States. In addition, he will lead the President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology."
This decision has been widely praised by the crypto community, as David Sacks has extensive experience in crypto. Matthew Dibb, Chief Investment Officer of crypto asset management firm Astronaut Capital, described the news as extremely optimistic, saying "David has had practical experience in cryptocurrencies for many years, holding tokens like SOL, and his technical and business capabilities in cryptocurrencies seem to be much stronger than most people imagine."
David Sacks speaking at the 2016 TechCrunch Disrupt conference
Trump introduced David Sacks as "a highly successful entrepreneur and investor over the past 25 years, having helped build and invest in some of Silicon Valley's most iconic companies. He was an early COO of PayPal and a member of the legendary 'PayPal Mafia'. He later founded the enterprise software company Yammer, which was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion. He then founded the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Craft Ventures. David is also the co-host of the popular technology podcast 'All-In Podcast', where he and his friends discuss economic, political and social issues."
Although Sacks is not as well-known as Musk, as a loyal supporter of Trump's campaign, he has become a regular in conservative media and on Twitter, playing an increasingly influential role in the political struggles of the tech industry.
From the "PayPal Mafia" to the "Political and Business Heavyweight", the First Half of David Sacks' Life
David Sacks was born into a Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa, and moved to Tennessee, USA with his family at the age of 5. Although Sacks did not explicitly want to become an entrepreneur at the time, he did not want to pursue a career like his father, who was an endocrinologist.
Sacks received a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University in 1994 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1998. In 1999, Sacks left his job at McKinsey and joined the e-commerce startup Confinity, founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek. That same year, Sacks became the first product manager of Confinity's flagship product and its corporate successor, PayPal.
Sacks was later promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO) of PayPal, responsible for building the company's core team and overseeing product management and design, sales and marketing, business development, international operations, customer service, fraud prevention operations, and human resources.
Sacks was a member of the so-called "PayPal Mafia", a group of PayPal's founders and early employees who later founded a series of successful tech companies, and are considered driving forces behind the rise of Web 2.0 and the revival of consumer-oriented internet companies after the 2001 dot-com bubble burst.
After PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002, Sacks ventured into Hollywood, producing the satirical film "Thank You for Smoking" in 2005, which tells the story of a political lobbyist's efforts to make unpleasant things acceptable.
Sacks and Musk attending a party for "Thank You for Smoking" in New York in 2006
In 2006, Sacks founded the website Geni.com, and in 2008, Sacks and co-founder Adam Pisoni spun off the internal communication tool into an independent company called Yammer. In 2008, Yammer launched the first enterprise social network for internal communication and collaboration. In July 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion as a core part of its cloud/social strategy.
In December 2014, David Sacks made a "major investment" in the recruitment platform Zenefits. By January 2016, with the company embroiled in a "regulatory crisis" over licensing compliance, the Zenefits board had Sacks take over as interim CEO and fired the original CEO Parker Conrad.
Over the next year, Sacks negotiated settlements with insurance regulators across the country, earning praise for "turning the situation around". He also overhauled Zenefits' product line, launching the "Z2" initiative and introducing a SaaS business model. Subsequently, PC Magazine named Zenefits "the best HR software on the market", but Buzzfeed reported the company was losing over $200 million a year. After just 10 months as interim CEO, Sacks handed the position over to former Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher.
In late 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures with Bill Lee, primarily investing in the B2B software sector. They initially raised $350 million, then announced a $500 million second fund in October 2019, and raised $1.1 billion in 2021. In November 2023, Craft Ventures raised $1.3 billion through Craft Ventures IV and Craft Ventures Growth II funds.
In March 2020, Sacks launched the business and technology commentary podcast "All In Podcast", supported by fellow venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg, covering current events, market trends, political issues and industry insights.
In 2021, Sacks co-founded the workplace chat company Glue with his former Craft colleague Evan Owen, which launched an AI tool in May 2024 to provide AI support for employee conversations on platforms like Google Meet and Zoom.
Also in 2021, David Sacks co-founded Callin, a social audio and podcast app seamlessly combining the two formats, which raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia, Goldcrest and Craft Ventures. In 2023, Callin was acquired by video sharing platform Rumble.
Musk's Buddy, Thiel's Classmate, the Man Behind Trump
In recent years, as a long-time partner of Musk and Peter Thiel, Sacks has transitioned from a well-known Silicon Valley executive to a celebrity in the conservative media, attracting a large number of right-leaning entrepreneurs to listen to his "All-In" podcast.
Sacks and Thiel met at Stanford University, where they co-wrote for Thiel's "Stanford Review". Since then, they have supported each other in the business and political worlds, and under Thiel's guidance, David Sacks has built his own political donation network PAC. Last December, he hosted a fundraiser for J.D. Vance. In April this year, Sacks donated $1 million to the "Protect Ohio Values PAC" supporting Vance. Around the same time, Donald Trump announced his support for Vance as a vice presidential candidate.
In September this year, Sacks co-hosted a Republican fundraising event with PayPal Mafia member Keith Rabois, although Sacks provided strong support for Vance, he hardly tweeted or published articles on social media to promote this event. His $1 million donation also received little media attention. However, in March this year, Sacks publicly praised Vance's stance of military restraint by the US towards Ukraine. He tweeted: "This is why I'm proud to support Vance." The tweet also quoted MAGA-related content and added: "It's time to put America's interests first."
As one of the most influential startup teams in Silicon Valley history, the PayPal Mafia's story is inseparable from the names of David Sacks and Elon Musk. These former business partners who once fought together at PayPal, although they have diverged in their career paths, have continued to have intertwined influence in the fields of technology and entrepreneurship.
David Sacks also indirectly participated in Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. According to insiders, when Musk was seeking to raise funds for the acquisition, Sacks used his connections in Silicon Valley and Wall Street to help Musk attract investments from top-tier institutions such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
These investments not only filled Musk's financing gap, but also strengthened market confidence in the deal. In addition, Sacks has repeatedly defended Musk on his own podcast, discussing the significance of the Twitter acquisition and linking it to the value of free speech, calling the deal a "key step for the tech industry to resist the censorship system".
Sacks claims that his political stance has "evolved" from liberalism to "populism". In an interview with the well-known Bitcoin personality Anthony Pompliano, he mentioned that his "working-class perspective" aligns with the transforming Republican Party.
At the Axios Tech Conference earlier this year, Sacks said his "differences with Biden are greater than his differences with Trump", and shortly afterwards, he invited Trump to appear on his co-hosted popular podcast "All In Podcast", which sowed the seeds of Trump's victory in the subsequent elections.
In June this year, Trump held a fundraising event at Sacks' home in San Francisco's wealthy district, during which Trump portrayed himself as the "Cryptocurrency President", fiercely attacking the Democratic Party's regulatory hostility towards the industry, and stating that he would "stop Gensler's crackdown on the crypto industry within an hour of taking office". At the event, Sacks and the Winklevoss brothers discussed their crypto investments with Trump, and ultimately, Trump raised $12 million from this event.
Now, as Trump is about to return to the White House, Sacks has been nominated as the "White House AI and Cryptocurrency Affairs Advisor", and the crypto market is most concerned about how Sacks will lead the US's crypto direction going forward.
SOL Maxi, David Sacks' Crypto Kingdom
In 2017, in an interview with CNBC, David Sacks discussed the "coordination of ICOs and future SEC regulation", expressing his hope that the SEC would distinguish between "protocol tokens" and "asset tokens". Protocol tokens have actual use in the software ecosystem and should not be treated as securities, while asset tokens fall within the scope of securities.
In 2018, David Sacks announced an investment in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin, which was one of the early investors in Solana, leading a $20 million funding round for Solana in July 2019.
That year, he also joined the advisory board of the decentralized exchange protocol 0x and promoted the establishment of a partnership between 0x and the digital securities platform Harbor. It is worth noting that Harbor is a project incubated by Craft Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Sacks, focusing on providing blockchain-based digital securities platforms covering compliant fundraising, investor management and liquidity services. In February 2020, Harbor was acquired by the digital asset custodian giant BitGo.
In December 2023, Sacks stated that he did not sell SOL tokens after the FTX collapse, "One of the stupidest attacks on me this year was saying I dumped SOL tokens on retail. If that were true, they should be rolling in it by now, congratulations to all the SOL holders."
David Sacks' shining moment in the crypto world should be when he was appointed by Trump as the "White House AI and Cryptocurrency Affairs Advisor". According to Bloomberg, David will not be required to divest or publicly disclose his assets upon joining the White House. Like Elon Musk, he will become a special government employee, able to serve up to 130 days per year.
David Sacks' Investment Portfolio
According to RootData statistics, Craft Ventures' crypto investments involve 12 projects, with infrastructure taking the majority. BlockBeats has sorted and introduced them for readers' reference.
dYdX
dYdX is a decentralized trading platform that provides users with key financial tools such as perpetual contracts, margin trading, spot trading, and lending. It provides traders with an off-chain order book and on-chain settlement, allowing them to short tokens, increase their long positions through leverage, and earn interest by depositing tokens.
After the news that Trump's government announced crypto advisor David Sacks had previously invested in dYdX was released, DYDX24 surged 24.53% intraday.
Lightning Labs
Lightning Labs develops software supporting the Lightning Network. Its open-source, secure, and scalable system enables users to send and receive funds more efficiently than before. Lightning Labs also provides a suite of verifiable non-custodial Lightning-based financial services, connecting the world of open-source software and next-generation Bitcoin finance.
Lightning Labs completed a $70 million Series B funding round on April 5, 2022, led by Valor Equity Partners, NYDIG, Goldcrest Capital, Baillie Gifford, and Vlad Tenev, among other notable investors such as CMT Digital, Electric Capital, and Digital Currency Group.
River Financial
River Financial is a financial institution focused on Bitcoin financial services. It enables clients to manage both Bitcoin brokerage accounts and Bitcoin mining accounts on a single platform. The company's flagship product - Bitcoin brokerage service - provides a platform for mature retail investors to buy and sell Bitcoin. Additionally, River Mining allows clients to mine Bitcoin using their own capital.
The company completed a $35 million Series B funding round on May 16, 2023, led by Kingsway Capital and Alarko Ventures, with other notable investors such as Polychain and Peter Thiel.
Kresus
Kresus is a Web3 mobile super app that allows users to create, manage, and store all their digital assets.
Kresus completed a $25 million Series A funding round on March 7, 2023, led by Liberty City Ventures and Craft Ventures, with other notable investors such as Franklin Templeton and Winklevoss Capital.
Set Protocol
Set Protocol is an asset management platform for creating, managing, and accessing tokenized asset baskets. Set Protocol's primary use case is to build "structured products" - customizable, fully collateralized crypto asset baskets that trade as on-chain ERC20 tokens, such as the DeFi Pulse Index ($DPI) and ETH 2x Flexible Leverage Index.
The company completed a $14 million Series A funding round on May 28, 2021, led by 1kx, Hashed, and Craft Ventures, with other notable investors such as 6th Man Ventures, The Spartan Group, and DeFiance Capital.
FOLD
Fold is the best way to earn Bit, through which you can earn Bit in your daily consumption. Using the Fold Visa debit card and purchasing gift cards from the Fold store can earn Bit in each transaction.
The company completed a $13 million Series A financing on May 27, 2021, led by Craft Ventures, with other investors including Slow Ventures, Bessemer Ventures, M13, and coinfund.
Harbor
Harbor is a digital securities platform aimed at becoming a one-stop service platform for secure token issuers. Its digital platform automates the manual processes of alternative investment subscription, investor management, and secondary transfer. In November 2019, Harbor obtained a transfer agent license from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), becoming the first blockchain company to hold both a broker-dealer license and a transfer agent license, and was acquired by BitGo on February 18, 2020.
Led by Founders fund, other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, Blockchain Capital, 1confirmation, and Multicoin co-founders Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain.
Handshake
Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol where each node is responsible for verifying and managing the root DNS naming zone. Its goal is to create an alternative to the existing certificate authorities and naming systems.
The company completed a $10.2 million financing on August 2, 2018, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, Sequoia Capital, Polychain, Digital Currency Group, Hashed, Founders Fund, Greylock, Craft Ventures, Lily Liu (chairman of the Solana Foundation), and Dovey Wan.
Voltage
Voltage is an enterprise-grade Lightning network infrastructure that bridges the gap between the speed and convenience of cloud infrastructure and the security and privacy required by Bit. It provides hosting services for users interested in running Bit or Lightning nodes in the cloud.
The company completed a $6 million seed round on January 20, 2022, with investors including Craft Ventures, Stillmark, Fulgur Ventures, Strategic Cyber Ventures, Cavalry Asset Management, and Tenzing.vc.
Galoy
Galoy is a Bit-native banking infrastructure that aims to make it easy for any community or institution to access payment, wallet, and banking services. The open-source Galoy Bit banking platform includes a secure backend API, mobile wallet, point-of-sale app, compliance tools, and management controls.
The company completed a $3 million seed round on December 16, 2021, led by Craft Ventures, with other investors including Kingsway Capital, Bitcoiner Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, and lightning Ventures.
Lumina
Lumina is a crypto-native financial platform that provides a full suite of institutional-grade tools, including portfolio management, accounting, and tax services. Lumina automatically imports and reconciles users' current and historical transactions, helping them get a comprehensive view of their investment performance, holdings, and tax information.
The company completed a $4 million seed round on October 2, 2018, led by Craft Ventures, with other investors including Dragonfly and Bain Capital Ventures.
Rare Bits
Rare Bits is a decentralized crypto collectibles peer-to-peer marketplace where users can discover, buy, and sell over 500,000 unique items that are verifiable on the blockchain, but according to the project's official account, the project is no longer active.
