Sam Altman of OpenAI has become the co-founder of Worldcoin, cryptocurrency project. The trading in this currency commenced on Monday, 24 July, 2023. The currency recorded an initial price of $1.70 before falling back to $2.52 at noon in London. By the intraday trade in London, $145 million worth of token had been traded. On the world’s largest exchange, Binance, the crypto hit a peak of $5.29. It had seen a trading volume of $25.1 million.
The core offering of this project is its World ID. It is described as a ‘digital passport’ and proves that the holder is a real human, and not an AI bot. To get the World ID, a person undergoes iris scan of the eye, using orb or a silver ball, approximately the size of a bowling ball. Once the orb’s iris scan verifies the person is a real human, a World ID is created.
The initial supply of the crypto is capped at 10 billion tokens. The initial launch consisted of 143 million Worldcoins, out of which 100 million were loaned to market makers. The remaining were allocated to investors who were verified by Orb.
Since its launch the orbing, operation is being scaled up to 35 cities in 20 countries.
Blockchain can store the World IDS in a way that preserues privacy and cannot be controlled or shut down by any single entity.
San Altman believes in the concept of UBI or universal basic income to remove inequalities. Since World IDs are with real people, these could be used while implementing UBI. Worldcoin lays the ground work for the UBI concept to become a reality.
People around the world are getting their eyeballs scanned in exchange for a digital ID and the promise of free crypto currency. Each verified user will receive 25 free World coin tokens.
During a trial period, the company has issued IDs for more than two million people in 120 countries. The trial period is the period of last two years.
In London, the Worldcoin representatives showed a stream of people how to download the app and get scanned, handing out free t-shirts and stickers saying ‘verified human’.
Worldcoin tokens were trading around $2.30 on Binance on Tuesday, July 25, 2023.