Worldcoin Just Skyrocketed (Here’s Why)

TL;DR

In the last two days WLD gained a whopping 68% (going from $1.90 on July 15 to $2.81 on July 16, and further increasing to $3.20 yesterday), but not everyone is happy about it.

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Time for a quick check in on Worldcoin.

ICYMI, Worldcoin is a crypto project founded by OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, designed to prove a person’s humanity online, in a world where AI is everywhere.

The company requires a one-time iris scan by an orb-like bot that:

Verifies you’re human (or at least, in possession of a human eyeball)
Then rewards you for being human, by giving you WLD tokens

Over time the value of WLD has risen from $1.90 all the way up to $11.45 and back down to $1.78.

But in the last two days it’s gained a whopping 68% (going from $1.90 on July 15 to $2.81 on July 16, and further increasing to $3.20 yesterday).

You’d think people would be excited about that news, but they’re not.

Here’s why:

The reason for the pump over the past few days is because the Worldcoin team announced that the unlock schedule for 80% of WLD tokens allocated to its investors and team members would be extended from three to five years.

In other words, the amount of new tokens being released into the market immediately is reduced, which helps prevent an increase in supply, which would typically lower the price.

This announcement has led many to call the project out as a scam that is manipulating the price of their tokens for the better of their (internal) investors and team.

Here’s our take:

While it is technically within the Worldcoin teams’ power to change the unlock schedule, there are better ways that this could’ve been handled.

(Like letting everyone who’s had their iris scanned vote on it…)

What we know for sure is that we are living in a scary world if a company that holds that much biometric data turns out to be a scam.

Here’s hoping they get back in touch with the way things are done in web3.

Otherwise they might just find themselves with a powerful product and no users.