• Worldcoin, the creation of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, is worth only half of what it was a month ago.
• This comes alongside increased scrutiny from lawmakers and hesitance from people to trade biometric data with a billionaire for a few cents.
• The price of Worldcoin has dropped from $3.58 to just $1.20.

Since Bitcoin rose in popularity in 2016 there has been no shortage of projects based on the blockchain that would “change the financial system as we know it” or a version of that promise. To date, no such project has ever managed to live up to that promise, not even Sam Altman’s Worldcoin.

The cryptocurrency launched in July 2023 and in order to claim your stake one would have to visit a physical location to have your eyeball scanned. To date, over two million people have joined Worldcoin but their tokens have declined in value dramatically.

Shortly after launch on 24th July, Worldcoin had a value of $3.58, but today the price of a Worldcoin is down to $1.20 as per data from Coin Market Cap.

While scanning your iris would net you 25 Worldcoin, those tokens are declining in value everyday and given the current trajectory, Worldcoin will likely join the ranks of the thousands of other alt-coins that we see folks shilling in replies on X.

At issue is the same problem all cryptocurrency faces – increased scrutiny from lawmakers. Worldcoin is currently the subject of an investigation in Kenya. The company is accused of collecting the incredibly sensitive biometric data of Kenyan citizens without being registered as a legal entity in the country.

This fear, uncertainty and doubt has seemingly bled through the community as at around the time of Kenya’s authority seizing Worldcoin’s orbs that collect biometric data, the price of the token shot down.

This presents a real problem for Sam Altman and Alex Blania as Worldcoin is now between a rock and a hard place. By issuing more tokens the market capitalisation of the token will be further diluted, that means that folks are less likely to trade biometric data for a few tokens that lose their value before the scan is complete.

When asked about the coin’s price by Gizmodo, Tools for Humanity (the company behind Worldcoin) declined to comment, pointing instead to a tweet from Blania from mid-August espousing the value of the system.

However, as the price continues to drop we can’t help but feel that Worldcoin is just the latest in a long, long line of projects that promised to upend the financial system only to never meet those expectations.

For one, cryptocurrency is incredibly complicated no matter how often a man in a Patagonia tries to convince a person that “it’s just like real money”. Sure, in theory it is but it’s rather rare for the fiat in your bank account to suddenly be worth half of what it was a month ago, something that is all to common in cryptocurrency.

Perhaps one day cryptocurrency will change the world but that day is not today and Worldcoin seemingly isn’t the company to make it happen.

[Image – @PhillipOgola on Twitter]