The recent announcement of Sam Altman’s departure from OpenAI has had a significant impact on the value of Worldcoin’s WLD token. Currently, WLD is trading at $1.86, experiencing a decline of more than 13% over the past day, according to data from CoinGecko. This drop represents a 42% decrease from WLD’s all-time high of $3.30, which was achieved when Worldcoin emerged from beta in July.
Within the last 24 hours, WLD has seen a trading volume of $141 million, with approximately 40% of it coming from the WLD and Tether (USDT) trading pair on Binance. The departure of Sam Altman, who co-founded Worldcoin along with Max Novendstern and Alex Blania in 2019, was due to his alleged lack of candid communication, which affected the board’s responsibilities. The board of directors announced in a blog post on Friday that they no longer have confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.
“The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
Surprisingly, the broader category of AI coins and tokens does not seem to have been significantly impacted by Altman’s departure. In the past 24 hours, the AI coin market cap, as defined by CoinGecko, has grown by 30% to reach $5.4 billion.
The Worldcoin Project and Its Mechanism
Worldcoin is a biometric cryptocurrency project developed by Tools for Humanity, with headquarters in San Francisco and Berlin. The project’s main objective is to authenticate human identity online through a mechanism called World ID, which helps combat bots and fake identities. Users join the network by having their iris scanned with an orb-shaped scanner and receive Worldcoin tokens as a result. This mechanism was inspired by the concept of universal basic income.
The project’s token, WLD, is based on the Ethereum blockchain. However, it is currently not available in the U.S. Worldcoin’s iris-scanning orbs have been deployed in various states, including New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta, enabling users to participate in the network.
Criticism and Controversies Surrounding Worldcoin
Since its inception, Worldcoin has faced criticism and controversies. In a published article by MIT Technology Review, it was claimed that the project acquired its first 500,000 users through deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts.
Furthermore, several governments, including those of the U.K., Germany, France, and notably Kenya, have expressed concerns about privacy, security, and financial implications. Kenya even suspended Worldcoin’s enrollment due to these concerns. In Nigeria, reports emerged that Nairobi police, in collaboration with officials from various agencies, had conducted a raid on a Worldcoin warehouse in the capital city. The country aimed to investigate the legality of Worldcoin’s activities and safeguard the collected data and its proposed utilization.
Similarly, the Argentine Agency for Access to Public Information (AAIP) has initiated a probe into Worldcoin to determine the legality of its data collection practices within the country.
Despite the challenges and controversies, Worldcoin officially launched out of beta in July 2023.
