David Sacks Exits Crypto Czar Gig, Gets a Permanent White House Backstage Pass

White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks announced on Thursday he's handing in his czar scepter to become co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Consider it a promotion from a limited-time gig to a season pass.

Sacks noted his run as a “special government employee” slammed into the legal wall of 130 working days, a cap that already had Democrats side-eyeing him last autumn. The new gig has no such temporal shackles, letting him stick around to whisper sweet nothings about tech into the administration's ear indefinitely.

During his roughly four-month reign, Sacks piloted the White House's early crypto maneuvers, including shepherding the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act and the ongoing push for a market-structure bill, colloquially known as the CLARITY Act. He also helped nudge the administration's AI framework out the door last week, because why focus on just one world-altering technology?

In his Bloomberg chat, Sacks stated PCAST will dive into AI, quantum computing, nuclear power, and other bleeding-edge tech, with the council set to issue policy recommendations across all those fields. Notably absent from his list of shiny objects was crypto, a silence more deafening than a quiet blockchain.

PCAST’s launch lineup reads like a fantasy draft for tech billionaires: Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Dell founder Michael Dell, early Coinbase backer Fred Ehrsam, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, AMD CEO Lisa Su, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Former Trump senior adviser Michael Kratsios will co-chair with Sacks, ensuring bipartisan vibes.

While Sacks ascends to this broader think-tank, many of the administration's headline crypto reforms are still stuck in legislative purgatory. The CLARITY Act remains bogged down in the Senate, and a dedicated White House crypto council never materialized, leaving the degen wishlist largely unchecked.

Sacks confirmed he liquidated his personal crypto bag before joining the administration to dodge conflicts of interest—a classic "wagmi" to "nagmi" pivot for a government role. He said his focus now is on sculpting AI policy and the wider tech strategy from his shiny new PCAST perch, where the only mooning discussed is theoretical.