If you’re among those who have already scanned the iris for Worldcoin’s crypto-based “free money” promise, you probably won’t be happy to hear that your biometric investment has been cut in half since launch.
The current prices of WLD Worldcoin have fallen rapidly with each passing day since its debut on July 24. As first reported by The Block, the price of WLD dropped from just under $2.50 at the beginning of August to around $1.31 as of August 25, according to data from CoinGecko. This represents a 44% drop in the last 30 days and if this downward trend continues, the price of WLD will drop to single digits in a month.
To register on the Worldcoin device, users’ irises must be scanned with a large, steel ball called an “Orb”. This provides users with a document called a World ID, which is proof that you can sort of identify your customer, which shows that the person behind the account is truly human, not an AI bot. All of this comes together in the World app, which is meant to be a universal wallet and a way to pay for your WLD.
The company claimed to have received more than 2 million registrations for World ID as of July 13, and at launch Worldcoin has allocated more than 43 WLD tokens to its expanding user base. Worldcoin co-founder and AI leader Sam Altman introduced “crazy lines around the world” so people can scan their irises just three days after launch.
However, this excitement did not last long. Those who had iris scans were given 25 WLDs, worth about $60 at the time of peak value. The same amount of tokens is currently worth just over $30. Many early purchasers may have much more in their crypto accounts, and if they’ve ever held it, they could be worth half their initial investment. The only ones who are happy about this are those who short-sell, trusting that Worldcoin will lose value prematurely.
While Tools for Humanity, the company behind Worldcoin, declined to comment on the token’s price, pointing to co-founder Alex Blania’s last tweet dated August 12, announcing that World App has 1.7 million monthly active users. but at that time not even a month had passed since the first release of the app.
Part of the problem was biometric data collection practices. Tools for Humanity has repeatedly claimed that users’ iris data is anonymized and encrypted, and as Quartz reported earlier this year, people living in the nation’s capital city of Nairobi have been lured in anticipation of free money tied to the popular mobile money app M-Pesa.
A little over a week after launch, Kenyan government officials said the company had ceased operations and announced that they were investigating the company for security risks said to be surrounding eyeball scanning technology. Also, local sources reported that Kenyan police raided Worldcoin offices in the country just days after the country announced the investigation.
49253
