Billionaire’s row looked different on the afternoon of June 6th. The normally subdued and polished Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco had become the site of a political frenzy. 

Black SUVs lined up outside of an illustrious beige mansion, while a gaggle of MAGA supporters gathered at a corner on Pacific Avenue, touting salacious signs reading things like “Trump is my favorite felon” in a neighborhood that largely identifies as liberal. 

The occasion was a ritzy Super PAC fundraiser, hosted by tech billionaire David Sacks and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya at Sack’s $35 million-dollar mansion. The impressive home buzzed with tech entrepreneurs and Bay Area crypto enthusiasts eager to cement their loyalty to republican candidate Donald Trump. The cost for attendance started at $50,000 a head and went up to $300,000 for added perks like a photo with the then-former president. 

Now, Sacks, the former CEO of Yammer and co-founder of venture capital fund Craft, is poised to serve as Trump’s appointed ‘Crypto Czar’, guiding policy for the ‘administration in Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrency’. The selection is the president-elect’s latest push to cement his allegiance to the crypto industry, a touchstone of his 2024 campaign, which has included promises to create a national bitcoin stockpile, appoint crypto-friendly regulators, and support mining and decentralization practices.  

David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas. He will safeguard free speech online, and steer us away from big tech bias and censorship.”, said Trump in a post on Truth Social. 

“He will work on a legal framework so the crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for and can thrive in the U.S.,” Trump said. 

Crypto-backed PACs accounted for nearly half of the Trump campaign’s corporate money donations totaling over $245 million. The president-elect set out to brand himself as the ‘pro-crypto’ candidate on the campaign trail beginning in 2021. The industry, which had been facing aggressive retaliation from the SEC chair Gary Gensler, welcomed him with open arms. 

“From now on the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry,” said Trump in August at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennesse. 

Since Trump’s November election win, crypto stocks have rallied to record highs, with Bitcoin hitting over $100,000 this week. Just weeks after the election, Gensler, who has notoriously investigated everyone from CEOs to celebrities in crypto-fraud cases, announced he would step down in January when Trump takes office. 

Trump is vying for him to be replaced by crypto-lobbyist Paul Atkins, who served as an SEC commissioner for 14 years – leaving in 2009 to form his fintech and crypto consulting agency Patomak Global Partners.  

The president-elect has included creating a national Bitcoin stockpile, similar to U.S. reserves of gold and oil. The reserve would primarily serve to promote stability in the crypto-economy. Trump proposed the idea at the Nashville conference, claiming the stockpile would strongly position the U.S. ahead of China in the digital currency space. 

“I think at a high level, a lot of the policy stuff is more sentiment-driven rather than concrete,” said Robert Le, a crypto analyst at Pitchbook.  

In May, the House of Representatives passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act passed in a bipartisan 279-136 vote. Though the act has not been brought to the Senate, some expect a similar bill to make headway when Trump takes office. 

The current act aims to regulate company transparency about their digital assets, ensures customer and company funds are kept separately, and outlines conflicts of interest. At a macro level, it aims to protect consumers from incidents like the FTX collapse. 

The bill has garnered support by top crypto companies including Coinbase, The Block, and Digital Currency Group, but the relationship framework between traditional banking and a crypto renaissance is raising caution across institutions like legacy banks and the Federal Reserve. 

Le says that he suspects the real momentum in the crypto industry will come from venture capital firms during the president’s next term, rather than legislative policy. He expects a spike in mergers and acquisitions along with IPO activity as confidence grows among investors.  

“Any company that wants to buy another company – they’re scared to do it because they feel like the FTC is going to block the deal, which they have,” said Le. 

“So there’s going to be a lot more M&A activity. That’s good for crypto companies (especially) the late-stage ones that raised money a few years ago and now they want to sell themselves,” he added. 

Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, is another key big tech adversary expected to be replaced when Trump takes office. Khan, who oversaw the blocking of a merger between Nvidia and Arm in February, has been consistently critical of consolidation in the crypto and AI space. 

Dragan Brosovic, clinical professor and Director of the Blockchain Research Lab at Arizona State University also believes that the Trump administration will aid in making the industry more attractive to investors, but warns that less established companies should remain cautious of the notoriously unpredictable market. 

“While it’s an exciting prospect, the inherent volatility of the crypto space and shifting political dynamics make it hard to nail down precise winners,” said Brosovic. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell touched on the importance of separating traditional banking from the digital currency industry at the New York Times Dealbook Summit earlier this month. 

“We would want the interaction between the crypto business and the banks to not to threaten the health and well-being of the banks,” said Powell. 

“To the extent, anybody’s doing that through a bank – if people are buying crypto products and things like that, it’s sort of a consumer protection aspect of it,” he explained.

Meanwhile, incoming crypto-czar David Sacks has gone full steam ahead on investments. His venture capital fund Craft has invested significantly in currencies Solana, BitGo, and Bitwise, leaving questions about conflicts of interest in his new role under Donald Trump. 

The evening of the fundraiser, Sacks took to the social media platform X to defend his endorsement of Trump. In the lengthy post, he cited ‘lawfare’, the border, the economy, and foreign policy as the primary motivations behind his endorsement, without a single mention of cryptocurrency regulation. 

The day of Sack’s appointment, CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman posted on X to congratulate the fellow tech mogul, “congrats to czar @DavidSacks!,” he said.