Universal Basic Income

Worldcoin

Sora

The native token of Worldcoin — a crypto project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — has surged more than 140% in the past week as its daily users ticked over the one million mark.&nbsp;
In a Feb. 18 post to X, Worldcoin announced that its crypto wallet application, dubbed “World App,” had notched more than one million users, a significant growth from just 100,000 daily active <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/worldcoin-claims-4-million-app-downloads-1-million-active-users">users in November 2023</a>. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
 World App, the first wallet built for the Worldcoin project, passed 1M daily users this week. This community is incredible <a href="https://t.co/Mf6Y51gscQ">pic.twitter.com/Mf6Y51gscQ</a>— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) <a href="https://twitter.com/worldcoin/status/1758897369872056585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2024</a>
</blockquote> 
<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/openai-creator-launches-worldcoin">Launched in July 2023</a> by&nbsp;Altman and Alex Blania, Worldcoin is a self-described “privacy-preserving” digital identity verification project that pays users in its native cryptocurrency in exchange for scanning their irises. 
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 The price of Worldcoin (WLD) has surged more than 172% in the past two weeks. Source: CoinGecko
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The self-stated <a href="https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">goal</a> of Worldcoin is to attempt to introduce worldwide Universal Basic Income, by issuing everyone on the planet a small amount of its native WLD token in exchange for verifying their identity. 
However, Worldcoin’s goal of ushering in universal basic income alongside its biometric identity system has invited its fair share of controversy, largely centered on privacy concerns over its metallic eye-scanning devices dubbed “Orbs.”
On Jan. 31, Hong Kong’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/hong-kong-investigate-worldcoin-privacy">launched an investigation</a> into Worldcoin’s local operations, citing “serious risks to personal data privacy.” The PCPD said it had executed warrants and entered six premises controlled by Worldcoin in Hong Kong as part of its investigation.
Outside of Hong Kong, the project has drawn the attention of regulators in many jurisdictions over <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain-2023/privacy">privacy</a> concerns, seeing its <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/worldcoin-kenya-suspends-local-activities-of-worldcoin">services completely suspended</a> in Kenya and the <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/worldcoin-halts-iris-scanning-india-brazil-france-report">pausing of iris scans</a> in India.
Irrespective of regulatory concerns, the native WLD token has posted gains of more than 141% in the past week, buoyed by a wider rally throughout the crypto sector.
Related: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/worldcoin-launches-singapore-following-india-pause">Worldcoin launches in Singapore following India pause</a>
Worldcoin’s gains have come alongside several major updates from OpenAI. 
On Feb. 16, <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/sora-openai-video-generation-model-artifical-intelligence-weakness">OpenAI unveiled its new text-to-video</a> generator, Sora, allowing users to generate video clips and scenes from text prompts.
A week earlier, on Feb. 9, <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/openai-seeking-trillions-ai-chip-development">Altman announced that he would seek</a> to raise a staggering $7 trillion to help the firm fund and scale its semiconductor chip development. While the massive dollar figure raised eyebrows throughout the tech world, Altman didn’t seem too phased. 
NFT Collector, DCinvestor: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/best-nft-collection-world-dc-investor-nft-collector/">Is this the best NFT collection in the world?</a>

Worldcoin soars 140% in a week as wallet app hits 1M daily users

Cointelegraph

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