On December 6, after Trump announced the appointment of Paul Atkins as SEC Chairman, Trump appointed PayPal co-founder David Sacks as White House Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency Affairs.
“In this important role, David will develop government policy in the areas of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, two areas that are critical to America’s future competitiveness, and his goal is to make the United States the undisputed global leader in both areas,” Trump wrote in the letter.
David will work to protect free speech online from the influence of big tech bias and censorship. He will also push for a clear legal framework that provides the cryptocurrency industry with the clarity it has long needed so it can thrive in the United States. In addition, he will lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.
˙This decision has been widely praised by the crypto community because David Sacks has a sophisticated crypto experience. Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer of crypto asset management company Astronaut Capital, described the news as extremely optimistic. He said, Over the years, David has had some practical experience in cryptocurrencies and holds tokens such as SOL. His technical and business capabilities in cryptocurrencies seem to be much stronger than most people imagine.
David Sacks speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2016
Trump introduced David Sacks as follows: He has been an extremely successful entrepreneur and investor over the past 25 years, having been involved in building and investing in some of Silicon Valleys most iconic companies. He was the COO of PayPal in its early days and a member of the legendary PayPal Mafia. He then founded enterprise software company Yammer, which was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion. He then founded Craft Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. David is also the co-host of the well-known technology podcast All-In Podcast, where he and his friends discuss economic, political and social issues.
While Sacks isn’t yet a household name like Musk, he’s become an increasingly influential figure in the tech industry’s political battles as a loyal supporter of Trump’s campaign cycle and a frequent fixture in conservative media and on Twitter.
From PayPal Mafia to Political and Business Leader, David Sacks First Half of Life
David Sacks was born into a Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa, and moved to Tennessee, USA with his family when he was 5. Although Sacks did not explicitly want to be an entrepreneur at the time, he did not want to follow the career of his father, an endocrinologist.
Sacks received his bachelors degree in economics from Stanford University in 1994 and his JD from the University of Chicago Law School in 1998. In 1999, Sacks left McKinsey and joined Confinity, an e-commerce startup founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek. That same year, Sacks became the first head of product for Confinitys flagship product and its corporate successor, PayPal.
Subsequently, Sacks was promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO) of PayPal, responsible for building the companys core team and responsible for multiple functional departments such as product management and design, sales and marketing, business development, international business, customer service, anti-fraud operations and human resources.
Sacks was a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia, a group of PayPal founders and early employees who went on to found a string of successful tech companies and are credited with the rise of Web 2.0 and the resurgence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the 2001 dot-com bubble burst.
After PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002, Sacks moved into Hollywood, producing the 2005 satire Thank You for Smoking, about how political lobbyists work to make unpleasant things acceptable.
Sacks and Musk at the Thank You for Smoking party in New York in 2006
In 2006, Sacks founded the website Geni.com. 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 “significant investment” in recruitment platform Zenefits. By January 2016, the Zenefits board asked Sacks to serve as interim CEO and ousted original CEO Parker Conrad when the company was caught in a “regulatory crisis” regarding license compliance.
Over the next year, Sacks negotiated a successful settlement with insurance regulators across the country, earning praise for turning things around. He also overhauled Zenefits’ product line, launching a program called “Z 2” and introducing a SaaS (software as a service) business model. PC Magazine has since called Zenefits “the best HR software on the market,” but at the same time, Buzzfeed reported that the company was losing more than $200 million a year. After just 10 months as interim CEO, Sacks handed over the reins to former Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher.
At the end of 2017, Sacks and Bill Lee co-founded Craft Ventures, which mainly invests in the B2B software field. It raised an initial capital of $350 million, announced a second fund of $500 million in October 2019, raised $1.1 billion in 2021, and in November 2023, Craft Ventures raised $1.3 billion through Craft Ventures IV and Craft Ventures Growth II funds.
In March 2020, Sacks created a business technology review podcast All In Podcast, supported by David Sacks and three other venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg, covering current affairs, market trends, political issues and industry insights.
In 2021, Sacks co-founded Glue, a workspace chat company with his former Craft colleague Evan Owen, which launched an AI tool that can be used in specific chats on platforms such as Google Meet and Zoom to provide employees with AI support during conversations. The product was officially released to the public in May 2024.
In 2021, David Sack and Axel Ericsson founded Callin, an app that seamlessly combines social audio and podcasts, and received $12 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia, Goldcrest and Craft Ventures. In 2023, Callin was acquired by video sharing platform Rumble.
Musks good brother, Peter Thiels classmate, the man behind Trump
In recent years, Sacks, a longtime partner of Musk and Peter Thiel, has gone from a high-profile Silicon Valley executive to a celebrity in alternative 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 the Stanford Review, founded by Thiel. Since then, the two have supported each other in the business and political worlds, and under the guidance of Peter Thiel, David Sacks formed his own political donor network PAC. Last December, he hosted a fundraiser for JD Vance. In April of this year, Sacks donated $1 million to the political organization Protect Ohio Values PAC that supports Vance. Around the same time, Donald Trump announced his support for Vance as vice president.
In September, Sacks co-hosted a Republican fundraiser with PayPal mafia member Keith Rabois, and despite his strong support for Vance, he barely tweeted or wrote about it on social media. His $1 million donation also received little media attention. However, in March, Sacks publicly praised Vances call for the United States to exercise military restraint toward Ukraine. This is why Im proud to support Vance, he wrote on Twitter, citing MAGA and adding, Its time to put Americas interests first.
As one of the most influential entrepreneurial teams in Silicon Valley history, the story of the PayPal Mafia is inseparable from the names of David Sacks and Elon Musk. Although the business partners who once worked together at PayPal have diverged in their career paths, they have always had an intertwined influence in the fields of technology and entrepreneurship.
David Sacks was also indirectly involved in Elon Musks acquisition of Twitter. According to people familiar with the matter, 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 institutions including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
These investments not only filled the financing gap for Musk, but also strengthened the market confidence in the deal. In addition, Sacks has repeatedly defended Musk on his podcast, talking about the significance of acquiring Twitter and linking it to the value of freedom of speech, calling the deal a key step in the technology industrys resistance to censorship.
Sacks claims that his political stance has evolved from liberalism to populism. In an interview with Anthony Pompliano, a well-known figure in the Bitcoin field, he mentioned that his working-class perspective coincides with the transition of the Republican Party.
At the Axios technology conference earlier this year, Sacks said that his differences with Biden are greater than those with Trump, and soon thereafter invited Trump to participate in the well-known podcast All In Podcast co-hosted by him. It was this podcast that planted the seeds of victory for Trump in the subsequent election campaign.
In June, Trump held a fundraiser at Sacks home in San Franciscos wealthy district, during which he branded himself as the cryptocurrency president, slamming the Democratic Partys regulatory hostility to the industry and saying he would stop Genslers crackdown on the crypto industry within an hour of taking office. At the meeting, Sacks and the Winklevoss brothers (Tyler Cameron Winklevoss) and others discussed their cryptocurrency investments with Trump, and Trump eventually raised $12 million from the event.
Now that Trump is about to enter the White House again, Sacks has been nominated as the White House Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency Affairs. What the crypto market is most concerned about is how Sacks will lead the future direction of encryption in the United States.
SOL Maxi, David Sacks’ Crypto Kingdom
In 2017, David Sacks talked about the coordination issue between ICO and future SEC regulation in an interview with CNBC, saying that he hoped the SEC could distinguish between protocol coins and asset coins. Protocol coins have practical uses in the software ecosystem and should not be considered securities, while asset coins fall into the category of securities.
In 2018, David Sacks announced his investment in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin. Multicoin was one of Solanas early investors and led a $20 million financing round for Solana in July 2019.
This year, he also joined the advisory board of the decentralized trading protocol 0x, and promoted a partnership between 0x and the digital securities platform Harbor. It is worth noting that Harbor is a project invested and incubated by Craft Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Sacks. It focuses on providing a digital securities platform based on blockchain technology, covering compliant fundraising, investor management and liquidity services. Subsequently, in February 2020, Harbor was acquired by digital asset custody giant BitGo.
In December 2023, Sacks said that FTX did not sell SOL after the collapse. One of the stupidest attacks against me this year was that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they would have made a lot of money now. Congratulations to everyone who holds SOL.
David Sackss highlight moment in the crypto world should be this time when he was appointed by Trump as the White House Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency Affairs. According to Bloomberg, Davids entry into the White House does not require him to divest or publicly disclose his assets. Like Elon Musk, he will become a special government employee and can serve up to 130 days a year.
David Sackss portfolio
According to RootData statistics, Craft Ventures crypto investments involved a total of 12 projects, with infrastructure accounting for the majority. BlockBeats has sorted out and introduced them for readers reference.
DX
dYdX is a decentralized exchange that provides users with key financial tools such as perpetual contracts, margin trading, spot trading, lending, etc. It provides traders with an off-chain order book and on-chain settlement, allowing them to short tokens, increase the risk exposure of long positions through leverage, and earn interest by depositing tokens for faster transactions.
After the Trump administration announced today that VC David Sacks, the head of encryption, had invested in dYdX, DYDX24 rose by 24.53%.
Lightning Labs
Lightning Labs develops the software that powers the Lightning Network. Its open source, secure, and scalable system enables users to send and receive funds more efficiently than ever before. Lightning Labs also offers a range of verifiable non-custodial Lightning-based financial services, bridging the worlds of open source software and next-generation Bitcoin financial software.
Lightning Labs completed its latest round of US$70 million in Series B financing on April 5, 2022, led by Valor Equity Partners, NYDlG, Goldcrest Capital, Baillie Gifford and Vlad Tenev. Other well-known investors in the project include CMT Digital, Electric Capital, Digital Currency Group, etc.
River Financial
River Financial is a financial institution focused on Bitcoin financial services. It enables customers to manage Bitcoin brokerage accounts and Bitcoin mining accounts on a single platform. The companys flagship product, Bitcoin brokerage services, provides a platform for sophisticated retail investors to buy and sell Bitcoin. In addition, River Mining allows customers to mine Bitcoin using their own funds.
The company completed a $35 million Series B financing round on May 16, 2023, led by Kingsway Capital, Alarko Ventures, and others. Other well-known investors in the project include Polychain, Peter Thiel, and others.
Kresus
Kresus is a Web3 mobile super app that allows users to create, manage and store all digital assets.
Kresus completed a $25 million Series A financing round on March 7, 2023, led by Liberty City Ventures, Craft Ventures, etc. Other well-known investors in the project include Franklin Templeton, Winklevoss Captial, etc.
Set Protocol
Set Protocol is an asset management platform for creating, managing, and acquiring tokenized asset baskets. The main application scenario of Set Protocol is to build structured products, which are customizable, fully collateralized baskets of crypto assets represented by ERC20 tokens on the chain, such as DeFi Pulse Index ($DPI) and ETH 2x Flexible Leverage Index.
The company completed a $14 million Series A financing round on May 28, 2021, led by 1kx, Hashed, Craft Ventures, etc. Other well-known investors in the project include 6th Man Ventures, The Spartan Group, and DeFiance Capital.
FOLD
Fold is the best way to earn Bitcoin for your everyday purchases. Earn Bitcoin on every purchase you make using the Fold Visa Debit Card and by purchasing gift cards from the Fold Store.
The company completed a $13 million Series A financing round 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 that aims to be a one-stop service platform for security token issuers. Its digital platform automates the manual processes of alternative investment subscription, investor management, and secondary transfers. In November 2019, Harbor obtained a transfer agent license issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), becoming the first blockchain company to have both a broker license and a transfer agent license. It 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 in which each node is responsible for validating and managing the root DNS naming zone. Its goal is to create an alternative to existing certificate authorities and naming systems.
The company completed a $10.2 million financing on August 2, 2018. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, Sequoia Capital, Polychain, Digital Currency Group, Hashed, Founders Fund, Greylock, Craft Ventures, Solana Foundation Chairman Lily Liu, Dovey Wan, etc.
Voltage
Voltage is an enterprise-grade Lightning Network infrastructure that bridges the gap between fast and convenient cloud infrastructure and the security and privacy required by Bitcoin. It provides hosting services for users interested in running Bitcoin 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 Bitcoin-native banking infrastructure designed to make payments, wallets, and banking services easily accessible to any community or institution. The open source Galoy Bitcoin banking platform includes a secure backend API, mobile wallet, point-of-sale application, compliance tools, and administrative control capabilities.
The company completed a $3 million seed round of financing on December 16, 2021, led by Craft Ventures. Other investors include Kingsway Capital, Bitcoiner Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Lightning Ventures, etc.
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 resolves users’ current and historical transactions, helping users gain a comprehensive view of 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 peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto items where users can discover, buy and sell more than 500,000 unique items on the platform, all of which can be verified for uniqueness on the blockchain. However, according to the projects official account information, the project is no longer active.
