President Donald Trump has named the first members of a reconstituted President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, bringing together leading Silicon Valley executives and several figures with direct ties to the crypto sector.
The White House said on March 25 that the initial appointments were made to PCAST, a federal advisory body rebuilt through executive order to help shape national strategy across science and technology. The council is intended to draw on private-sector and research expertise to strengthen U.S. leadership in critical technical fields.
The member list includes well-known names such as Marc Andreessen, Sergey Brin, Safra Catz, Michael Dell, Fred Ehrsam, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, and Mark Zuckerberg. The council will be co-chaired by David Sacks and Michael Kratsios, pairing policy leadership with industry experience as the group develops recommendations for the administration.
Crypto Gains a Clearer Place in Federal Tech Policy
According to the White House, the council will focus on the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies create for the U.S. workforce and broader economic positioning. Within that agenda, digital assets appear to hold a more visible role than before.
David Sacks, who serves as the White House AI and crypto czar, has publicly backed bitcoin as a non-fiat store of value and has supported multiple blockchain ventures. Other appointees also have strong links to the sector. Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase and Paradigm, and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, are both deeply associated with crypto investment and ecosystem development. Larry Ellison, David Friedberg, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also have varying degrees of exposure to infrastructure, platforms, or technologies connected to digital assets.
Beyond Innovation, Toward Economic and Strategic Competition
A key structural detail comes from the Jan. 23, 2025 executive order, which made the Special Advisor for AI and crypto a standing member and co-chair of the council. That framework places digital assets inside a broader policy conversation that spans technology governance, economic strategy, and national security. It also directs the body to provide technical input for policy decisions while engaging stakeholders from industry, academia, and government.
Taken together, the appointments suggest the administration wants top corporate, engineering, and investment voices involved in defining the next phase of U.S. innovation policy. For markets, the message is clear: AI, semiconductors, large-scale tech platforms, and crypto are increasingly being treated as interconnected parts of America’s competitiveness agenda.