On July 24, Sam Altman’s startup World ID announced that the Worldcoin token, a traceable digital currency on the blockchain that requires users to prove their identity, will be available in 35 cities across 20 countries.
According to Reuters, Word ID is likened to a “digital passport” to prove its owner is a real person, not an artificial intelligence (AI) bot. To obtain a World ID, customers must register to perform a live iris scan using Worldcoin’s special orb, a silver ball roughly the size of a bowling ball. Once your iris is scanned and verified as a real person by the globe, your Word ID will be generated
The company said that from May 2021 to July 2023, more than 2 million individuals across more than 30 different countries verified World ID. In certain countries, users will receive Worldcoin WLD digital currency tokens when registering an account. Worldcoin, which holds about 20% of all WLD tokens, is currently not being launched in the US because of strict scrutiny by regulators. For the first 15 years, the company limited the total supply to 10 billion WLD.
Co-founder Alex Blania says blockchain can store World IDs and protect privacy without being controlled or shut down by any single entity. Blania said World ID is essential in the age of AI chatbots like ChatGPT because it can be used to distinguish between real people and online AI bots.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Worldcoin will help solve how the economy will be reshaped by generative AI. One example Altman gives is a universal basic income (UBI), a social welfare program typically run by governments to provide a periodic cash benefit available to all citizens. Because AI “will do more and more of the work that people do now,” the OpenAI CEO believes UBI can help combat income inequality. Since only real people own a World ID, it can be used to reduce fraud when implementing UBI. Altman said a world with UBI is far in the future and there is no clear idea of which entity can distribute the coins, but Worldcoin has laid the groundwork for that to happen.
According to the Financial Times, the collapse of FTX and Celsius prompted leading regulators to issue a series of enforcement actions aimed at cracking down on speculative crypto projects. Despite the regulatory hurdles, investors poured around $250 million into Worldcoin, including venture capital groups Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures, internet entrepreneurs Reid Hoffman and Sam Bankman-Fried before the FTX empire died down
