US President-elect Donald Trump named former PayPal Chief Operating Officer David Sacks as his artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar.
The move is seen as another step towards overhauling US policy.
Making the announcement on Thursday, Trump said in a post on his social-media site Truth Social: “He [Sacks] 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 Sacks will also lead a White House advisory council on science and technology.
The crypto czar and other officials in Trump’s incoming administration such as the chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are expected to reshape US policy on digital currency along with a newly created crypto advisory council, Reuters reported.
Trump’s tech backers generally want to see minimal regulation around AI and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, saying Washington would throttle growing innovative sectors with excessive rules.
Trump’s pick on Sacks followed his announcement on Wednesday 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 the United States the “crypto capital of the planet and to accumulate a national stockpile of bitcoin.
Bitcoin broke $100,000 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.
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 that was acquired by eBay in 2002.
Sacks is also a former chief executive of software company Zenefits and founded Yammer, a social network for enterprise users.
He was an early evangelist of cryptocurrencies, telling CNBC in a 2017 interview, that he believed the rise of bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, was revolutionising the internet.
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