David Sacks and his funding agency Craft Ventures have divested greater than $200 million in crypto holdings since President Donald Trump named Sacks because the White Home’s AI and crypto czar, in accordance with a Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, in accordance with the memo. Sacks additionally held inventory within the on-line brokerage Robinhood and the crypto trade Coinbase. And he was a restricted associate within the marquee crypto enterprise capital funds Multicoin Capital and Blockchain Capital, together with 90 different VCs.
Whereas Sacks has divested most of his crypto holdings, he and Craft Ventures nonetheless maintain fairness in a collection of firms. His shares of the crypto custody agency BitGo and the Bitcoin protocol developer Lightning Labs are value about 2.5% and 1.1% of his complete belongings, respectively, in accordance with the memo. The federal government, nevertheless, has agreed to waive any conflicts of curiosity relating to Sacks and Craft Ventures’ ongoing stakes in crypto firms.
“I sold all my cryptocurrency (including BTC, ETH, and SOL) prior to the start of the administration,” Sacks mentioned in a publish on X earlier in March.
He and his agency Craft Ventures didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Dated March 5, the memo on Sacks’ pursuits within the crypto trade follows social media rumblings that the AI and crypto czar risked mixing his personal enterprise with the federal government’s crypto dealings. After Trump posted in early March that sure cryptocurrencies, together with Solana, can be included in a nationwide crypto reserve, critics mentioned that Sacks was boosting his personal portfolio.
And extra naysayers got here out in opposition to Sacks as soon as Trump formally approved the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a digital belongings stockpile later that week. “This is a direct transfer of wealth from the U.S. treasury to David Sacks and other crypto barons,” mentioned Ryan Grim, who runs a well-liked account on X and a politics e-newsletter.
Sacks countered that he had divested a lot of his cryptocurrency holdings, and crypto executives got here to his protection. “He is doing tremendous work and will not be sharing in any of the economic upside to avoid even the slightest appearance of a conflict,” Cameron Winklevoss, cofounder of the crypto trade Gemini, posted on X.
Trump named Sacks as his AI and crypto czar in December. The then incoming president mentioned Sacks, who’s a former govt at PayPal, would information coverage on the regulation of synthetic intelligence and cryptocurrencies.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
