Donald Trump says he is selecting venture capitalist David Sacks of Craft Ventures LLC to serve as his artificial intelligence and crypto czar, a newly created position that underscores the president-elect’s intent to boost two rapidly developing industries. “David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas,” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social network. Trump said that Sacks would also lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. In Sacks, Trump is tapping one of his most prominent Silicon Valley supporters and fundraisers for a prime position in his administration. Sacks played a key role in bolstering Trump’s fundraising among technology industry donors, including co-hosting an event at his San Francisco home in June, with tickets at $300,000 a head. He is also closely associated with Vice President-elect JD Vance, the investor-turned-Ohio senator. Sacks is a venture capitalist and part of Silicon Valley’s “PayPal Mafia.” He first made his name in the technology industry during a stint as the chief operating officer of PayPal, the payments company whose founders in the late 1990s included billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and investor Peter Thiel. After it was sold to eBay, Sacks turned to Hollywood, where he produced the 2005 satire Thank You for Smoking. Back in Silicon Valley, he founded workplace communications company Yammer, which was bought by Microsoft Corp. in 2012 for $1.2 billion. He founded his own venture capital firm, Craft Ventures, in 2017 and has invested in Musk-owned businesses, including SpaceX. Sacks said on a recent episode of his All-In podcast that a “key man” clause in the agreements of his venture firm’s legal documents would likely prevent him from taking a full-time position, but he might consider an advisory role in the new administration. A Craft spokeswoman said Sacks would not be leaving Craft. In his post, Trump said Sacks “will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.” Protecting free speech is a keen interest of Sacks. He regularly speaks about “woke” interests that try to muzzle unpopular opinions and positions. The new post is expected to help spearhead the crypto industry deregulation Trump promised on the campaign trail. The role is expected to provide cryptocurrency advocates a direct line to the White House and serve as a liaison between Trump, Congress and the federal agencies that interface with digital assets, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Trump heavily campaigned on supporting crypto, after previously disparaging digital assets during his first White House term, saying their “value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” The president-elect on Thursday said Sacks would “work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.” During the campaign, Trump spoke at a Bitcoin conference, accepted crypto campaign donations and met with executives from Bitcoin mining companies and crypto exchanges multiple times. Trump’s desire to give priority to the digital asset industry is also reflected in his close allies and cabinet selections, including his Commerce secretary pick, Howard Lutnick, and Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent. On the AI front, Sacks would help Trump put his imprint on an emerging technology whose popular use has exploded in recent years. Sacks is poised to be at the front lines in determining how the federal government both adopts AI and regulates its use as advances in the technology and adoption by consumers pose a wide array of benefits as well as risks touching on national security, privacy, jobs and other areas. The president-elect has expressed both awe at the power of AI technology as well as concern over the potential harms from its use. During his first term, he signed executive orders that sought to maintain US leadership in the field and directed the federal government to prioritize AI in research and development spending. As AI has become more mainstream in recent years and with Congress slow to act, President Joe Biden has sought to fill that void. Biden signed an executive order in 2023 that establishes security and privacy protections and requires developers to safety-test new models, casting the sweeping regulatory order as necessary to safeguard consumers. A number of technology giants have also agreed to adopt a set of voluntary safeguards which call for them to test AI systems for discriminatory tendencies or security flaws and to share those results. Trump has vowed to repeal Biden’s order. The Republican Party’s 2024 platform dismissed Biden’s executive order as one that “hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.” Sacks can be expected to work closely with Musk, the world’s richest person and one of the president-elect’s most prominent supporters. Musk is also a player in the AI space with his company xAI and a chatbot named Grok — efforts which pit him against Silicon Valley’s giants — and he stands to wield significant influence within the incoming administration. The appointment won’t require Sacks to divest or publicly disclose his assets. Like Musk, Sacks will be a special government employee. He can serve a maximum of 130 days per year, with or without compensation. However, conflict of interest rules apply to special government employees, meaning Sacks will have to recuse himself from matters that could impact his holdings. Sacks’s Craft Ventures is known more for enterprise software investing than for crypto, but it has made a few crypto investments, including BitGo and Bitwise. Still, Sacks has firm opinions on the sector. Speaking last month on All-In, Sacks praised a bill on crypto regulation that had passed in the U.S. House but not the Senate earlier this year. The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act would regulate certain types of digital assets as a commodity, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “The crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they’re a commodity and they want commodities to be governed, like all other commodities, by the CFTC,” he said on the November podcast. He also disparaged some of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s positions on crypto under its chair, Gary Gensler. “The days of Gensler terrifying crypto companies,” he said. “Those days are about to be over.” Earlier this week, Trump nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC. ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour confirmed on a podcast interview that his employees asked social media influencers to promote memes about the FBI’s raid on the home of his archrival, the CEO of Polymarket. Both companies offer competing events-betting markets, a new kind of betting industry where people wager about the outcomes of events ranging from elections to popular culture. The FBI raided the home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan last month, and it turns out Kalshi tried to capitalize on its rival’s misfortunes by asking influencers to post memes about it, Mansour said. “Some of our team got pretty heated. They didn’t pay anyone; they just asked some of our longstanding affiliates to post some of the memes,” Mansour told Nichole Wischoff on this week’s episode of her show FirstMoney In. Pirates Wires, a media outlet founded by Mike Solana, reported that Kalshi employees were paying influencers to post content suggesting that Polymarket and its CEO Shayne Coplan were engaging in illegal activities. The Pirates Wires article, however, also acknowledged its own apparent conflicts of interest with this report. Solana is a chief marketing officer for Founders Fund, one of Polymarket’s key investors, and Polymarket is an advertiser for Pirates Wires. The podcast segment discussing Kalshi’s response to the raid and the rivalry with Polymarket was deleted shortly after it initially aired. TechCrunch, however, has obtained and listened to the deleted portion. On the podcast, Mansour accused Polymarket of engaging in similar social media tactics against Kalshi, too. “Both companies have been doing this,” he said, adding that his team believed Polymarket was behind some social media posts suggesting that “we also got raided by the FBI. That did not happen,” he said. “We did not get raided by the FBI.” TechCrunch couldn’t confirm these allegations. Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi responded to our requests for comment. But the CEO did say on the podcast that he let the social media wars “go too far” by members of his company, adding, “I don’t think there’s a point going tit for tat.” While Kalshi didn’t fire the involved employees, Mansour said the individuals “understand that it was a mistake, and they shouldn’t do this again.” Polymarket alleged the reasons for the raid had to do with political motivations surrounding wagers on the U.S. presidential election, although both markets were making bets on its outcome. According to Bloomberg, the Department of Justice is investigating Polymarket for allegedly allowing U.S. users to engage in restricted trades. Following a 2022 settlement with the Commodity and Exchange Commission, Polymarket is barred from allowing U.S. traders to place bets on its platform, Bloomberg also reported. Kalshi, unlike Polymarket, has been legally permitted to accept trades from U.S. residents since 2021. In September the company also won a lawsuit that permitted it to accept bets on election outcomes. Kalshi, whose backers include Sequoia and Y Combinator, is currently raising a funding round of as much or more than $50 million, TechCrunch reported last month.
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Ludhiana: With only a week left for MC elections, parties and candidates have pulled out all stops to make an impression. Most candidates are making door-to-door visits to forge a personal touch. Also, since parties have given a chance to many new faces, the leaders are making it a point to meet voters personally and request their support. However, the poster and flag war between candidates has annoyed residents whose walls are being defaced with stickers. Candidates are hiring e-rickshaws to visit main roads while campaigning. With only a few days left, their family members have also hit the campaign trail. They are also making optimum use of social media, with former councillors talking about works done in the previous term and new candidates promising voters to resolve issues of their wards. The little granddaughter of BJP candidate Manju Aggarwal is seeking votes. Inder Aggarwal, her husband, said that his granddaughter is accompanying her grandmother and greets people with folded hands. He added that she was quite enthusiastic about it. In a video shared on social media, former councillor and Congress candidate Baljinder Singh Bunty listed the works done in the ward in the previous term. He even challenged the ruling party candidate to prove that works being inaugurated by him or the ruling party MLA were approved by him. He said that these works were proposed during his tenure but ruling party leaders were taking credit. While candidates of AAP, Congress and BJP are going full steam ahead, SAD candidates have been tardy. In a few wards, SAD candidates were yet to start campaign activities as their names were announced at the last moment. We also published the following articles recently Last of nominations done, AAP candidates step up campaign Ludhiana witnessed a flurry of nominations on the final day for the Municipal Corporation elections, with AAP candidates leading the charge. MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi made a noteworthy entrance, riding his scooter to accompany his wife's nomination. AAP highlighted its candidates' groundwork and developmental agenda, while also welcoming several members from Congress and BJP into its fold. Beware of social media rumours: EOU to BPSC prelim candidates Bihar's Economic Offences Unit (EOU) issued a warning to candidates regarding social media rumors surrounding the upcoming BPSC 70th Combined Preliminary Exam on December 13th. The EOU urged candidates to report any viral question papers or answer sheets. Strict measures, including a potential 10-year imprisonment and a Rs 1 crore fine, are in place to combat exam malpractices. Around 4. AAP considers BIP, Congress turncoats as winnable candidates Veteran Delhi politicians from Congress and BJP are likely to contest the upcoming elections as Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidates. Several former legislators have already joined AAP, hoping to bolster the party's standing and offer experience. AAP is anticipated to replace several sitting MLAs to combat anti-incumbency, potentially favoring these seasoned politicians.
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Cass sheriff identifies victim pulled from Blackwater LakeThe task force was set up in February by , Gwent Police, Tai Calon Community Housing and Blaenau Gwent Youth Service. It won the Anti-Social Behaviour category at the Wales Safer Communities Awards ceremony, which are held annually to recognise outstanding contributions to community safety from individuals, organisations or partnerships across the public, private and third sectors. Councillor Helen Cunningham, ’s deputy leader, said: “The task force was set up as a response to pockets of anti-social behaviour in our communities here in Blaenau Gwent, and as a recognition that no single agency or organisation could tackle this alone. "We’ve made some real good progress in this work, and I’m pleased that the Wales Safer Communities Award recognises this and praises the true partnership ethos behind it. "The task force has much more work to do, and all partners remained fully focussed on supporting our communities, listening to and acting on their concerns." Chief Inspector Stevie Warden said: "One of the key aims of our taskforce is to reduce anti-social behaviour and protect residents from associated harm and nuisance. Disorderly behaviour of any kind is completely unacceptable, and we'll use every tool we have at our disposal to ensure it is stamped out of our communities."