The native token of Worldcoin — a crypto project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — has surged more than 140% in the past week as its daily users ticked over the one million mark.
In a Feb. 18 post to X, Worldcoin announced that its crypto wallet application, dubbed “World App,” had notched more than one million users, a significant growth from just 100,000 daily active users in November 2023.
Launched in July 2023 by Altman and Alex Blania, Worldcoin is a self-described “privacy-preserving” digital identity verification project that pays users in its native cryptocurrency in exchange for scanning their irises.
The self-stated goal of Worldcoin is to attempt to introduce worldwide Universal Basic Income, by issuing everyone on the planet a small amount of its native WLD token in exchange for verifying their identity.
However, Worldcoin’s goal of ushering in universal basic income alongside its biometric identity system has invited its fair share of controversy, largely centered on privacy concerns over its metallic eye-scanning devices dubbed “Orbs.”
On Jan. 31, Hong Kong’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) launched an investigation into Worldcoin’s local operations, citing “serious risks to personal data privacy.” The PCPD said it had executed warrants and entered six premises controlled by Worldcoin in Hong Kong as part of its investigation.
Outside of Hong Kong, the project has drawn the attention of regulators in many jurisdictions over privacy concerns, seeing its services completely suspended in Kenya and the pausing of iris scans in India.
Irrespective of regulatory concerns, the native WLD token has posted gains of more than 141% in the past week, buoyed by a wider rally throughout the crypto sector.
Worldcoin’s gains have come alongside several major updates from OpenAI.
On Feb. 16, OpenAI unveiled its new text-to-video generator, Sora, allowing users to generate video clips and scenes from text prompts.
A week earlier, on Feb. 9, Altman announced that he would seek to raise a staggering $7 trillion to help the firm fund and scale its semiconductor chip development. While the massive dollar figure raised eyebrows throughout the tech world, Altman didn’t seem too phased.
Source : Cointelegraph by Tom Mitchelhill / Feb 19, 2024