David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s go-to “czar” for AI and crypto, and his venture-capital firm, Craft Ventures, recently parted ways with a whopping $200 million worth of digital asset holdings.
According to Bloomberg, citing a memo from the White House, Sacks and Craft liquidated their entire crypto portfolio—Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL)—before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
This revelation came on March 5 by White House counsel David Warrington.
Among the divestitures: Sacks ditched his stakes in Coinbase and Robinhood, as well as his limited-partner shares in crypto funds Multicoin Capital and Blockchain Capital.
Craft Ventures followed suit, selling off its own interests in Multicoin Capital and Bitwise Asset Management.
Sacks has repeatedly insisted he’s not into crypto anymore—at least not since becoming the White House’s crypto czar. He even made a point of addressing it directly on March 3, responding to a tweet by VC reporter George Hammond.
“Correct. I sold all my cryptocurrency (including BTC, ETH, and SOL) prior to the start of the administration,” he clarified on X (formerly Twitter).
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren had also been pressing for Sacks to release his financial disclosures to the public. By divesting his crypto holdings before taking on the role of crypto adviser, Sacks is clearly distancing himself from any potential bias.
But Trump’s track record on the matter? That’s a different story.
Potential conflicts of interest
On the eve of his inauguration, Trump launched his very own memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP) — a token that has no utility. But that didn’t stop it from gaining a cult following and peaking at a value of $15 billion.
Those followers? They lost billions. Official Trump is currently down about 83.5% of its value from its all-time high. See below.
A recent Financial Times investigation shows the project raising at least $350 million in the first three weeks post-launch. Despite claims that it’s “not distributed or sold by Donald Trump or his affiliates,” the memecoin’s real backers seem to be Trump’s subsidiary, CIC Digital, and Fight Fight Fight LLC, which own a whopping 80% of the token.
Trump’s crypto ventures didn’t stop there. Last September, he launched World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform that peddles the WLFI token. His sons—Eric, Don Jr., and Barron—are all reportedly involved in the project.
This week, World Liberty Financial raised $550 million in a token sale, pushing its total funding close to $600 million so far. So far, it has secured $550 million by selling its WLFI tokens, data from ICO Drops shows.
Last month, crypto.news reported that World Liberty Financial sold over 24 billion tokens, leaving around 950 million tokens available for purchase.
It’s worth noting that, on March 6, Trump signed a second Executive Order to establish a U.S. Bitcoin reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile. At the time, Sacks downplayed the decision to include altcoins in the stockpile.
Buddying up to Binance?
Binance is reportedly in talks with Trump and/or World Liberty Financial to sell a financial stake in its U.S. arm. The discussions reportedly began after Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, rbeagan looking to reestablish a presence in the U.S. market.
It remains unclear whether the stake would be contingent on a pardon for Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao.
Recall how Binance’s recent brush with the law. The company, which has no official headquarters, ran into significant legal trouble over allegations of money laundering and regulatory violations.
But under the Trump administration, cryptocurrency companies like Binance stand to benefit from loose regulations. So far, the Trump-appointed leadership of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has halted numerous investigations into crypto-related companies that started under President Joe Biden’s watch — including Binance.
