Three years since its inception and after a bit of a rocky trial phase, Sam Altman-founded crypto startup Worldcoin is officially launching.
The San Francisco and Berlin-based company Tools for Humanity, which develops Worldcoin, has a lofty goal of creating a global digital identity system by scanning the eyeballs of everyone on Earth. It is starting off with 1,500 eyeball scanning devices scattered around major world cities with U.S. locations in San Francisco, New York and Miami. Worldcoin already has 2 million signups, according to its website.
To incentivize people to get their eyeball scanned and create their unique digital ID, participants will receive periodic payments in the company's proprietary cryptocurrency Worldcoin (WLD), currently priced at $2.13 a coin.
"If successful, we believe Worldcoin could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path to AI-funded UBI," Altman and Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania said in a statement on the company's website.
UBI stands for universal basic income and has been a topic in the cryptocurrency community for years, with some believing that the power of crypto can be leveraged to give everyone on the planet a steady income in digital currency.
Users can sign up for appointments with the orbs on the World App or at the website worldcoin.org. The application doubles as a wallet to store cryptocurrency and U.S. dollars.
Worldcoin started during the height of cryptomania when the price of bitcoin was more than double where it was today. The company has managed to raise over $500 million, however, some of its high profile investors have been liquidated (Three Arrows Capital) or indicted on fraud (Sam Bankman-Fried).
The company has also been criticized for using deceptive and exploitative practices when it was signing up its first half a million test users in mostly developing countries like Ghana and Indonesia.
