06/12/24

US: Bitcoin soars to record high as Donald Trump appoints former Paypal CEO as US 'crypto czar'

As published on: sbs.com, Friday 6 December, 2024.

United States president-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday he was appointing former PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks as his "White House AI and Crypto Czar," another step towards overhauling the country's cryptocurrency policy.

"He will work on a legal framework so the crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the US," Trump said in a post on his social media site Truth Social, without saying whether "czar" was an official title.

The crypto czar and other officials in Trump's incoming administration, such as the chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are expected to reshape US policy on digital currency along with a newly created crypto advisory council.

Trump announced on Wednesday that he was nominating prominent Washington lawyer and crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC, in a move celebrated by the industry.

Trump — who once labelled crypto a scam — embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make US the "crypto capital of the planet" and to accumulate a national stockpile of bitcoin.

Bitcoin broke US$100,000 ($155,360) for the first time on Wednesday night, a milestone hailed even by sceptics as a coming-of-age for digital assets as investors bet on a friendly US administration to cement the place of cryptocurrencies in financial markets.

Matthew Dibb, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency asset manager Astronaut Capital, described the news of Sacks' appointment as extremely bullish.

"David has had somewhat of a hands-on approach to crypto over the years, at times holding coins such as Solana. He appears to be a lot more technically and commercially competent regarding crypto than most would think," he said.
A member of the 'Paypal Mafia'
Born in South Africa, Sacks, 52, is a co-founder of venture capital firm Craft Ventures and an early leader of PayPal, a payment processing firm acquired by eBay in 2002.

Sacks is considered a member of the 'PayPal Mafia' — former workers and executives at the digital finance firm that includes prominent Trump supporters Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

Musk, the Tesla CEO who leads artificial intelligence startup xAI, is a crypto fan and was appointed by Trump as co-lead of the new Department of Government Efficiency. The advisory board to streamline government is nicknamed DOGE, the name of a cryptocurrency.

Sacks is also a former chief executive of software company Zenefits and founded Yammer, a social network for enterprise users.

He was an early advocate of cryptocurrencies, telling CNBC in a 2017 interview that he believed the rise of bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, was revolutionising the internet.

"It feels like we are witnessing the birth of a new kind of web. Some people have called it the decentralized web or the internet of money."

Trump said Sacks will also lead a White House advisory council on science and technology.

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