Trump appoints former PayPal COO David Sacks as AI and crypto czar

WASHINGTON - US President-elect Donald Trump on Dec 5 said he was appointing former PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks to be his White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar.

“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.

Trump – who once labelled crypto a scam – embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and to accumulate a national stockpile of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin broke US$100,000 for the first time

on the night of Dec 4, 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.

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

Trump said Mr Sacks will also lead the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. REUTERS