Support Google's breakup! Meet America's first "AI and Cryptocurrency Tsar"

On December 6th, local time, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced the appointment of renowned venture capitalist David O. Sacks as the head of AI and cryptocurrency affairs at the White House.

As a core member of Silicon Valley's famous "PayPal Mafia," Sacks has long been an investor and advocate for cryptocurrency. In his view, Bitcoin plays a powerful role in the macroeconomy as a store of value that cannot be devalued by the government. The Federal Reserve's endless money printing poses a significant risk of devaluation for the dollar, while Bitcoin has the potential to become a non-sovereign world reserve currency.

Sacks also holds a relatively tough stance on the regulation of large tech companies in the U.S. He believes that Google, which holds a monopoly in the search, advertising, and YouTube sectors, should be broken up. The issues with Meta are more focused on content moderation, and the urgency for a breakup is relatively lower.

Core Member of the PayPal Mafia

Public information shows that David O. Sacks was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and immigrated to Tennessee, USA with his family at the age of five. He attended the University of Memphis in Tennessee during his early years, earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University in 1994, and obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1998.

Sacks' connection with PayPal began in 1999 when he left his job as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company to join the e-commerce startup Confinity, founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. Later that year, Confinity's remittance service merged with Elon Musk's online banking site X.com, and the new company was renamed PayPal. Sacks subsequently became PayPal's first Chief Operating Officer (COO).

(In 2007, the PayPal Mafia group photo, number 7 is David O. Sacks, number 8 is Peter Thiel, Elon Musk is absent)

As COO of PayPal, Sacks built many of the company's key teams, overseeing product management and design, sales and marketing, and business development. During his tenure, PayPal's annual payment volume grew from zero to $3.5 billion, and revenue increased from zero to over $100 million in 2001. The company launched business accounts and expanded to multiple currencies and over 80 countries.

PayPal went public for the first time in February 2002. This was one of the earliest IPOs in the U.S. stock market after the 9/11 attacks. On the first day, the stock price rose over 54%. In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion.

After PayPal was acquired, Sacks became one of the founders of the social enterprise software company Yammer and served as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Yammer provides a social networking tool for enterprises, helping internal communication and collaboration within companies. In 2012, Yammer was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion.

As a successful angel investor, Sachs has been investing in technology companies for twenty years. His investments include Addepar, Affirm, Airbnb, Clutter, Eventbrite, Facebook, Gusto, Houzz, Intercom, Mixpanel, Opendoor, Palantir Technologies, PayPal, Postmates, ResearchGate, Rumble, Scribd, Slack, SpaceX, SurveyMonkey, ThirdLove, Uber, and Wish.

Close Relationship with Vice President Vance

Sachs is not a staunch supporter of Trump and has issued harsh criticisms of him following the Capitol riots in 2021.

In the 2024 election, Sachs initially supported Republican Congressman DeSantis, then shifted to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His connection to Trump began through another core member of the PayPal mafia, Peter Thiel.

As one of the rare staunch Trump supporters in Silicon Valley (especially during his first term), Thiel introduced Vance to Sachs in 2021, prompting him to donate and fundraise for Vance. It is believed that Thiel and Sachs ultimately facilitated Trump's choice of Vance as his running mate. After Trump's assassination attempt this year, Sachs publicly announced his support for Trump and played a key role in Trump's fundraising from the tech industry.

Bitcoin Has the Potential to Become the World Reserve Currency

For a long time, Sachs has been a cryptocurrency investor and advocate.

According to Sachs in an interview, he began investing in Bitcoin as early as 2012. In his view, Bitcoin serves as a store of value that cannot be devalued by the government, fulfilling PayPal's original mission of establishing a "new world currency."

Sachs believes that the Federal Reserve's endless money printing poses a significant risk of devaluation for the dollar, while Bitcoin has the potential to become an unofficial world reserve currency:

Just as we talk about the Federal Reserve, when the government is in control, there is a huge risk of currency devaluation, especially when you have the world reserve currency, there is a tremendous temptation to print money to fund budgets and accumulate unpayable debt.

(2022 interview) The current debt of the United States has reached 130% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

The money we owe is greater than the size of the entire economy or our economic output, which sounds difficult to repay. So the ultimate temptation will be to monetize the debt, essentially reducing the value of the currency to pay off this debt. This has historically been a risk.

Sachs holds a relatively moderate stance on Bitcoin regulation. He praised the approach of the "21st Century Financial Innovation and Technology Act" to regulate certain types of digital assets as commodities, overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission:

The cryptocurrency industry basically wants a very clear line to understand when they are considered commodities, and they want to be regulated by the CFTC like all other commodities.

Google should be broken up, Meta can wait

On the regulation of large tech companies, Sachs holds a relatively strong view. In the "All-In" podcast this November, Sachs openly stated that Google should be broken up:

Google, which holds a monopoly in search, advertising, and YouTube videos, should be broken up.

There is a high likelihood of legal challenges or antitrust lawsuits against this tech giant.

Sachs also mentioned that while Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, faces challenges, the urgency for a breakup is not as great:

Meta's issues are more focused on content moderation, especially the role it played in the Hunter Biden story review during the 2020 election cycle.

Congress should investigate what went wrong and what role the deep state played in the moderation requests revealed in the Twitter files