David Sacks and his investment firm Craft Ventures have divested more than $200 million in crypto holdings since President Donald Trump named Sacks as the White House’s AI and crypto czar, according to a Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, according to the memo. Sacks also held stock in the online brokerage Robinhood and the crypto exchange Coinbase. And he was a limited partner in the marquee crypto venture capital funds Multicoin Capital and Blockchain Capital, along with 90 other VCs.
While Sacks has divested most of his crypto holdings, he and Craft Ventures still hold equity in a suite of companies. His shares of the crypto custody firm BitGo and the Bitcoin protocol developer Lightning Labs are worth about 2.5% and 1.1% of his total assets, respectively, according to the memo. The government, however, has agreed to waive any conflicts of interest regarding Sacks and Craft Ventures’ ongoing stakes in crypto companies.
“I sold all my cryptocurrency (including BTC, ETH, and SOL) prior to the start of the administration,” Sacks said in a post on X earlier in March.
He and his firm Craft Ventures did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dated March 5, the memo on Sacks’ interests in the crypto industry follows social media rumblings that the AI and crypto czar risked mixing his own business with the government’s crypto dealings. After Trump posted in early March that certain cryptocurrencies, including Solana, would be included in a national crypto reserve, critics said that Sacks was boosting his own portfolio.
And more naysayers came out against Sacks once Trump officially authorized the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a digital assets stockpile later that week. “This is a direct transfer of wealth from the U.S. treasury to David Sacks and other crypto barons,” said Ryan Grim, who runs a popular account on X and a politics newsletter.
Sacks countered that he had divested much of his cryptocurrency holdings, and crypto executives came to his defense. “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 exchange Gemini, posted on X.
Trump named Sacks as his AI and crypto czar in December. The then incoming president said Sacks, who is a former executive at PayPal, would guide policy on the regulation of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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