Original Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
On December 6th, Beijing time, U.S. President-elect Trump announced the appointment of David O. Sacks as the White House Director of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency. Now, let’s unveil the illustrious resume of the "Crypto Tsar" 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 in formulating policies in the fields of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, both of which are crucial for enhancing America's future competitiveness. David will work to ensure that the U.S. becomes the undisputed global leader in these two areas. He will defend online 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 U.S. Additionally, David will lead the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology."
Trump further introduced David O. Sacks' impressive background: Over the past 25 years, David O. Sacks has been an extremely successful entrepreneur and investor, creating and investing in some of Silicon Valley's most iconic companies. He was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) during PayPal's founding period and was also a member of the legendary group known as the "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 established the venture capital firm Craft Ventures in San Francisco. David O. Sacks is also a co-host of the top tech podcast "All-In Podcast," where he frequently discusses economic, political, and social issues. David possesses deep knowledge, rich business experience, exceptional wisdom, and a pragmatic attitude to lead the U.S. towards brilliance in these two key tech fields.
Additionally, according to Bloomberg, David O. Sacks played a key role in supporting Trump in fundraising from tech industry donors. He also has a close relationship with incoming Vice President JD Vance.
It is worth mentioning that David O. Sacks served as an executive alongside Musk during the early days of PayPal and was also an investor in Twitter. Musk and David O. Sacks co-hosted a billionaire dinner themed "Against Biden" in April of this year.
David O. Sacks' Early Firm Belief in Crypto
David O. Sacks' early interviews showcased his profound insights and firm belief in the cryptocurrency industry.
In 2017, David O. Sacks stated in an interview with CNBC that as an early participant in PayPal, he never thought he would be interested in payments again after using PayPal. However, Bitcoin is realizing PayPal's original vision of creating "a new world currency." Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are now fulfilling this initial vision. They operate in a decentralized manner (using a decentralized database called blockchain), while PayPal attempted to do so in a centralized way.
At that time, David O. Sacks pointed out, "It feels like we are witnessing the birth of a new type of network. Some people call it a decentralized network or the currency internet." Bitcoin reinforces its scarcity through a combination of cryptography and economic incentives (cryptoeconomics).
When responding to the question of "how ICOs and future SEC regulations will coordinate," David O. Sacks expressed hope that the SEC could distinguish between "protocol tokens" (which have actual utility in a software ecosystem and should not be considered securities) and "asset tokens" (which are securities). Most ICO activities are conducted through protocol tokens. Better projects have worked hard to build their tokens, so they are not securities. However, David O. Sacks also stated that he believes we will soon see the emergence of asset tokens (traditional asset tokens).
Regarding whether "digital assets and tokenization pose a long-term threat to traditional venture capital," David O. Sacks told CNBC that it will certainly challenge venture capital, as venture capital firms wanting to invest before ICOs must compete with angel investors to provide real added value. Additionally, LP interests may be tokenized like most other illiquid assets.
David O. Sacks also pointed out three major challenges facing cryptocurrencies at that time: scalability, slideware (only at the white paper or PPT stage), and regulation. He listed some of the most promising use cases to date, including value storage, payments, crowdfunding, document storage, identity management and verification, prediction markets, custody, ownership chains, notarization 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 trading protocol 0x core team. At that time, 0x had also established a partnership with the digital securities platform Harbor, which is also part of Craft Ventures' portfolio, helping to incubate Harbor. Harbor provides a blockchain-powered digital securities platform for compliant fundraising, investor management, and liquidity. Later, in February 2020, Harbor was acquired by digital asset custodian BitGo. David O. Sacks stated in a CNBC interview that Harbor addressed the compliance issues of asset tokenization, presenting a huge opportunity for blockchain to bring more liquidity and transparency to private securities.
Speaking of Craft Ventures, it is a venture capital firm co-founded by David O. Sacks, primarily investing in the B2B software investment space, and has successfully raised multiple funds. Craft Ventures' first fund raised $350 million. In October 2019, Craft Ventures completed fundraising for its second fund, with a committed capital amount of $500 million. In November 2023, Craft Ventures raised $1.3 billion through Craft Ventures IV and Craft Ventures Growth II funds.
It is noteworthy that David O. Sacks also led investments in Airbnb, Meta, Reddit, Slack, X, Uber, and xAI. In the crypto space, David O. Sacks led investments in the crypto asset management company Bitwise and the digital securities platform Harbor at Craft Ventures. Additionally, Craft Ventures led the seed round financing of the DeFi protocol Set Protocol in 2018 (in April 2023, Set Protocol announced it would cease development, and the team would relinquish multi-signature ownership rights). In April 2022, together with Multicoin, they invested in the blockchain-based decentralized mapping network Hivemapper, and in February 2023, they participated in funding the Web3-friendly entertainment company Superplastic.
Also in 2018, David O. Sacks announced an investment in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin on behalf of Craft Ventures. Multicoin was one of the early investors in Solana, leading a $20 million financing round for Solana in July 2019.
David O. Sacks is also a firm holder of Solana. Fast forward to December 2023, David O. Sacks clarified that he did not sell Solana after the FTX incident and candidly stated, "One of the dumbest attacks against me this year was saying I sold Solana (SOL) tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they should have made a fortune by now. Congratulations to everyone holding SOL."
Looking back two years, David O. Sacks also delved into the prospects of Solana in his podcast "All-In Podcast." He mentioned that many elites in Silicon Valley have high hopes for Solana, believing it has the potential to eventually surpass Ethereum. Even if this vision has not been fully realized, Solana is fully capable of ranking third in Crypto.
References:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/david-sacks-cryptocurrency-interview.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/ex-paypal-david-sacks-on-craft-fund-and-harbor.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43EvyfJ3Xrw
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