If I asked you a year ago to explain what chat GPT is all about, you might have given a blank stare not anymore, though, in a very short time, we've become all too familiar with the ins and outs of AI and large language models. The same thing might be happening now with another new tech venture. It's called world Coin.
World Coin a new form of digital money that has just been launched. The project is called world Coin. It aims to provide a unique world ID to humans.
It's the passion project of Sam Altman. He's the CEO of open Ai, the company that gave us chat GPT. If you haven't heard of worldcoin yet, well it's inventors and backers hope it too will soon become a household name. World Coin is sort of a cryptocurrency, but not only that. It ultimately aims to revolutionize the way we make sick cure financial transactions using a unique identifier, our eyeballs. And
if that sounds confusing, never fear. Bloomberg's Hannah Miller, who covers crypto and startups, is here to help us out. She explains why world coin is having a tough time gaining acceptance in some places and why some governments won't it regulated.
There's also this idea, well, why do we need something that uses crypto and blockchain to keep track of identity? You know, we already have passport systems, we already have national ID systems. So I do think there is this question of why do we need to add this in why Crypto, Why Blockchain?
I'm West Kosova today on the Big Take Why world Coin is eyeing our eyes? Hey Hannah, Hi, how are you? I am okay. I've been really excited to talk to you about this because world Coin is just such a strange thing. We keep hearing about it, and to be honest with you, I still don't quite understand what it is.
This is a cryptocurrency project that was started with this idea of proof of personhood. So with the rise of artificial intelligence, it's becoming harder to tell who's a human on the Internet and who's a bot. You know, we've already seen things like chat GPT. This is just such a hot area in tech. So basically, it has a system where you would prove your identity by getting your eyeball scanned by this little device called an orb. You
basically look into it. It scans your eye and you have a unique digital identity, and that's supposed to show that you're a real person.
And so from then on, whenever you want to use world coin, you have to scan your eyeball.
You don't. It's actually a one time thing. So you do the orb once and you get this ID on your phone. It's called a world ID, and basically that's supposed to eventually give you access to services online. It's a security method. They're still kind of figuring out what they're going to do with this identity, and they're making partnerships with different security firms that are out there to kind of figure out how this could help the internet
and Internet users determine who's human and who's not. It's all about access, and it's all about showing that, yeah, you're a person and not a bot.
And why are they doing this? Why did they decide to embark on this adventure.
From the beginning, there's been this focus on universal basic income, this idea that everyone's entitled to a stipend basically and that will help them meet costs of living. And this has been a passion problem of Sam Altman, who's the CEO of the AI company OpenAI, which developed chat GPT.
He's really passionate about this area. And there was this idea that, Okay, if you have a unique digital identity, that can make it easier for governments to distribute universal basic income payments because you have one identity per person that can cut down on fraud. And the way you do it is through this eyeball scan. So that's sort
of how it got started. I think the project is still figuring out where it's going to go and the use cases for this ID, and right now it's in the process of gaining new users scanning people's eyeballs to get them a world ID.
So let's talk for a minute about the scanning the eyeball thing in this ORB. Which does it? How does it work? Like, where do you go get your eyeball scanned?
Yeah? So I actually had an ORB demonstration in person. I was at the Tools for Humanity office in San Francisco. Tools for Humanity is the star that developed world coin and they're based in San Francisco and Berlin. So I got to their SF office and they were like, Hey, would you like your eyeball scanned? And I declined. I was a little nervous to be honest, and so they did it with another person in front of me, and
it's really really quick. I don't know if you use the clear service at the airport where you know, you look into a camera and they determine your identity by scanning your eyes, I would say it's very similar to that. I will say it did not work the first time they tried it, but then once it got going, you know, they gave the world idea to the person and it
was fine. But with orbs, you can find them in public places all over the world, and they're actually trying to roll out more orbs, so they have them in places like train stations or pop up stores where people can stop in and get their eyeball scanned. When I spoke to the Tools for Humanity executives, you know, they're really saying that they're really interested in markets in Asia. That's a hot area for them, and and there's been a lot of sign ups in Africa and Kenya specifically.
And do you have to pay to heav your eyeball scan and get this code.
No, that's the thing is that actually they pay you. So they give you about twenty five world tokens, which is the cryptocurrency associated with this project, the twenty five tokens that you get, it's equivalent to less than fifty dollars. Right now, a world token is trading for a little bit over a dollar, and there's been a lot of controversy around this idea that you're being paid to give up your biometric data.
In theory, at least if world coin takes off, all these people who are sitting on these tokens, could Wang go making a whole lot of money for doing nothing.
The hope is for a lot of people is that the price of these tokens will increase. The world tokens haven't been around that long. They were released publicly in July, so we have seen that price fluctuate over the past month or so. There's still obviously a lot of time to see what happens.
So if the idea behind this is to give people an ID that can be trusted and ultimately in this kind of utopian idea be used to give people this universal basic income, why is it attached to a cryptocurrency. What's the point of making this ID into a cryptocurrency.
I think the original idea of it is that this would be the easiest way to distribute universal basic income to distribute payments. And there's a lot around blockchain technology concerning privacy but also transparency, And there's this idea that by having a blockchain digital ledger, it'll be easier to track payments, make sure that there isn't fraud. See what's happening.
I will say, though, when I talk to the CEO of Tools for Humanity, this guy Alex Bania, he really says that they actually don't consider themselves a crypto project, even though they use a cryptocurrency that they see themselves as in the intersection of AI and crypto, and they don't want to put a label on it. And that's a trend I've been seeing among startups that even though they use cryptocurrency, they don't want to be associated with the crypto industry.
Are any people saying it sort of looks like making this into a cryptocurrency is just a way to get people to sign up for a thing that they otherwise would not really want to do.
Yeah. I mean for a lot of the areas that WORLDCIN has been doing initial signups in, like these are hard hit places. These are people who fifty dollars is a lot of money to them. So MIT Technology Review did this whole investigation into world coin sign up practices and came out and said that this could be seen as exploitative. And since then, you know, world Coin is continue to come under fire for multiple reasons.
And what does world Coin say about that.
They've argued that they make clear what they're telling these people, that people are willingly doing this, that they have safe and secure sign up practices, and that they're only interested in expanding. I should say too, that that world Coin cryptotoken I mentioned earlier, that's not available in the US because there is a lot of regulatory concern around crypto. There was this whole debate going on on whether cryptocurrencies
are securities or not. And when I spoke to Sam Altman and Alex Blania about this, they said that because of this regulatory uncertainty in the US, they're not bringing world Coin here. You are not paid out in tokens in the US.
After the break why some governments are skeptical about world coin kind of Once world Coin scans your iris and gives you this identifier, what happens to your iris scan? Are they collecting these all around the world.
Their whole pitch is that this IRIS data is deleted, it's not put out publicly. But that's not to say that there aren't security risks here. There were multiple incidents involving world Coin. One was that people were selling their world ideas. They were selling them on black markets and it was mainly in China. The other thing, too, was that operators, these are the people who will sign you up with that ORB that they'll find you at the
train station scan your eyeball. They actually got some of their accounts hacked and their credentials were stolen, and even some of them lost money. So I brought these things up to Alex and Sam, and Alex said they've made security changes, that they've increased their security. And one line he said really stuck out to me, which was early on, this is crypto, there's going to be things like this that happen. It is kind of scary to think about
in the context of biometric data. And the other thing is there have been reports that people have been able to kind of fake their ideas, like they'll swap people out during the scanning process to create like a unique idea and they'll put the money, you know, like the operators are in on it.
There's all this stuff that.
Came out in this report, so I think they're still figuring out the process here.
And how many people so far have had their eyeball scanned it. How much has world coin paid out so far?
There have been around two point three million sign ups, and I should point out that two million of those sign ups happened before the token launch, which was in July, so there's only been like a few hundred thousand since that launch.
So those people initially were doing it even though they weren't getting any benefit from it.
Yeah, and they eventually get the token, like they have the token now. It's hard to say how much they paid out because you don't know how many of those sign ups are in the US where you wouldn't get paid. But you can understand that this is a pretty significant amount of money that they've doled out. Tools for Humanity is venture backed. They've raised a lot of money. They had a recent round that was over one hundred million dollars, so you know this is a well funded project.
Why is it getting this money? What do the venture capital firms who are pouring money into this thing think it's going to do? That will provide them value.
Yeah, So I've had the opportunity to talk with several of world coins investors, you know, people who have invested in Tools for Humanity, the startup that developed the project, and a lot of them believe that this will be used as a security service, that this is going to be the defining thing for showing that you're human online and they want a piece of that. I also think the fact that Sam Altman is involved in this project.
I mean he is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in tech right now, So I think his presence, his influence, that's a big green flag for people in the space right now.
I know those two million people who've signed up so far, do we know where they are?
So it doesn't do that geographic breakdown on the website that isn't publicly available, but we do know. Worldcoin has done a lot of work in Africa and Asia Europe as well. I mean they are based in Berlin.
You mentioned Kenya and the controversy there. Can you talk a little bit more about what happened there, because I guess there were a lot of sign ups there.
First, the Kenyan government was very concerned about privacy practices here and they actually ordered worldcoin to stop doing sign ups and argued that Worldcoin actually ignored that order. The governments has suspended all activities associated with the cryptocurrency project world Coin due to security concerns interior companies, and there was even a raid of Worldcoin warehouses that were orbs are being kept in Nairobi. It was pretty tense there.
And that's not the only place where Worldcoin has run into regulatory obstacles. There have been concerns in the UK, Germany and Argentina, and it's kind of a case by case basis, like it's different reasons in different places.
I should add that Worldcoin has said it complies with all laws and regulations governing the processing of personal data. In the markets where Worldcoin is available. It is said it does not and never will sell any user personal data and that world Cooin was designed to protect individual privacy and has built a robust privacy program. You had said about how this company was co founded by Sam Altman, and we all know chat GPT, which is taking up
a lot of our attention these days. How much of this is his own personal quest to make this happen.
One thing that was really interesting to me was that he made clear that Toolstream Humanity and world Coin that they were working with regulators and speaking with them. And we can see from his work in AI that he's really passionate about representing the industry in a public space, arguing that AI needs better regulation. So that's why it's so surprising to me that worldcoin has run into these issues in so many different places, especially in Germany. I mean,
they're based there. They should have easy access to regulators and be able to work with them.
When we come back, what would it take for worldcoin to really take off? Annah? One of the reasons world Coin says they made this identifier was so that it could be used as a secure log in for all kinds of other things. Is it being used that way or other companies using world coin logins as a secure way to access their own platforms.
Worldcoin does have a partnership with the security firm Octa, so with one of OCTA's products, you can actually use the world ID to sign in. So these are just the beginnings of the world ID being used for security for access things like that. It'll be interesting to see whether there will be more partnerships and how this is going to be incorporated into online life.
You know, we hear all the time about people losing their crypto password and they lose all their money and it can never be recovered. Is there any concern that this thing could wind up losing you a lot of money if you can't find it.
Yeah, I mean I do think, you know, especially with the black market stuff, like there is concern about credentials being compromised. I do believe they have a recovery system with world id, but it's a pretty intuitive thing, like you have an app on your phone. I would say it's a little more user friendly than typical crypto wallets.
And of course there's this big question of this universal basic income and using this identifier, using world coin to pay people out. Is there any sign that any of that is actually going to happen.
I think you'd have to get governments on board with that, and as we've seen, there are a lot of governments skeptical of worldcoin. There's also this idea, well, why do we need something that uses crypto and blockchain to keep track of identity? You know, we already have passport systems, we already have national ID systems. So I do think there is this question of why do we need to
add this in why crypto, why blockchain? You know, there already has been more of a focus on proof of personhood and having access to different things online an era where AI is just growing stronger.
You know, it's funny because this all sounds just so odd and maybe a little bit creepy, and yet like every day, one hundred times I let my iPhone scan my eyeball to open up the phone. So this technology is kind of everywhere. Why is this particular one getting so much attention?
The iPhone example is used a lot, and so is that Clear example that I mentioned earlier when you're going through airport security. They are different systems, Like the iPhone is definitely more of a closed system. Clear has had security breaches in the past year that this is a
service that's been critiqued by regulators. So that does bring some idea, you know that maybe this isn't the best way to use this technology, But yeah, I think privacy security, those were going to be the things that the project is going to have to focus on moving forward.
And you've covered this story from the beginning. What are you watching for next?
It wouldn't shock me if they raise more money in the near future. This is a project that has drawn a lot of buzz from venture capitalists. That's a blessing and a curse. I mean, vcs are under a lot of fire, especially in the crypto space. A lot of crypto vcs backed FTX. So yes, you know, Vendra capital money helps you build your business and things like that, but I think there's a little bit of a stink around venture money right now, especially in crypto.
Anna, thanks so much for talking with me today. Thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions our comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Ergalina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Frederica Romanello
is our producer. Our associate producer is Zeneb Sidiki. Raphael m Sely is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm wes Kasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another big take