Within a year of August 2021, there was some U.S. political conversation about “financial deplatforming,” but it did not rise to the level of a major, system‑wide political hot potato in the way Sacks described.

The main flare‑up in that 12‑month window was the 2022 Canadian Freedom Convoy: GoFundMe removed the convoy’s fundraiser and U.S. Republican officials (e.g., Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several state attorneys general) opened investigations and publicly attacked the move as fraud and censorship. Commentary from right‑leaning outlets framed this as “financial deplatforming” or “bank account deplatforming” and explicitly as a new tool of cancel culture or censorship, especially in response to Canada’s use of emergency powers to freeze convoy‑linked bank accounts.(cbsnews.com) However, this remained a fairly niche, partisan concern tied to a specific foreign protest, not a sustained, top‑tier political issue in U.S. domestic debates.

The broad, national fight Sacks envisioned—framed in terms of “debanking” and systemic financial censorship—only really took off later. Coverage notes that the term “debanking” gained mainstream traction after a 2024 Joe Rogan–Marc Andreessen episode brought alleged politically motivated account closures to wide attention.(en.wikipedia.org) In 2024–25, the issue became a recurring flashpoint: Republican‑led states passed and defended laws against perceived viewpoint‑based financial discrimination, Treasury and the OCC publicly pushed back, and President Trump issued an executive order directing regulators to crack down on discriminatory “debanking.”(reuters.com) That later wave matches Sacks’ substance and “next wave of censorship” framing, but it arrived roughly 2–4 years after his August 2021 prediction, not “over the next year.”

Because the core phenomenon he described did not become a major, widely debated U.S. political issue within about a year of August 2021—even though it did become one later—the prediction is best scored as wrong on its stated time horizon.