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Worldcoin Scanned Third-World Eyeballs, Now it Wants to Send Cash?
Can the token turn its fortunes around? Or is the early damage done with Worldcoin’s reputation, and Altman’s involvement too much to right this ship?
Adam Atlantic
March 12, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Wind back the clock to July 2023…
Bitcoin was trading around $30,000.
Nvidia had just crossed $1 trillion market cap for the first time,
ChatGPT from OpenAI was still just being figured out by the public.
And the now-famous CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, releases his crypto pet-project, Worldcoin, to the masses.
What is the Worldcoin Controversy
Worldcoin had been in development since 2019, but it had taken a lot of time, funding, and graft to launch the network to the public.
Part of this difficulty rested with the fact their global launch campaign involved letting people scan their eyeballs into ‘orbs’, to create a self-custody Worldcoin account and receive free WLD coins.
As crazy as that sounds, that’s exactly what happened in places like Kenya, Argentina, India, and many corners of the impoverished and developing world.
Thousands of people were quite literally queuing for hours and trying for days in these countries to scan their eyeballs and get their free WLD. In Kenya they would get around $49 worth.
Source: Standard Media Kenya[1]
Around the Worldcoin public launch, BBC quoted information on Worldcoin’s then website in 2023, which said,[2]
‘We are creating the world's largest identity and financial network as a public utility, giving ownership to everyone. And establishing universal access to the global economy regardless of country or background,’
They went on to report, Altman had even considered that this would be a form of universal basic income for everyone in the world to receive.
This orb, eye scanning launch, was fraught with problems, security concerns, fraud and in some cases, violence.[3]
It was stopped in Kenya, India, investigated in Europe and Singapore, and has endured a rocky road in the years since. But it’s still around, and now they’ve launched a whole new aspect to – whatever it is they do – that is taking aim at X.com, and fintech giants like Block Inc (Cash App) and PayPal.
Scan an Eyeball, Send Some Cash
Worldcoin (just known as ‘World’ now) just announced an app they call ‘World Chat’. They say it’s, ‘a new way to connect, chat and send money on the World network.’
They also say, ‘Thanks to the power of World ID’, you know the person you’re chatting with is real and not a bot, scammer, or someone pretending to be someone else.
Source: World via X.com[4]
This is an interesting launch from World. It’s clear this is aiming at X.com’s move towards the launch of XMoney later this year, and they’re trying to muscle in on Elon Musk’s territory.
It’s like Cash App, XMoney, PayPal, but all wrapped up with the weird orb eyeball scanning ID. And of course there’s the Worldcoin token, WLD. It’s around 93% down from its 2021 all-time highs and is currently trading at all-time lows.
Can the token turn its fortunes around? Or is the early damage done with Worldcoin’s reputation, and Altman’s involvement too much to right this ship?
My take, this is one that constantly gets the attention and headlines, but screams of a Top 100 crypto to avoid, even if the market turns back and roars higher.
Yes, it might pump with everything else, but will it get back to and above its all-time highs of $11.74? I doubt it. It’s a strange project, that’s trying to muscle in on Elon’s territory, and I think ultimately, it fails.
Trust in crypto,
Adam Atlantic