Wire 7/27 - AI-Aye-Aye: Worldcoin Launches Without Much Optimism
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AI-Aye-Aye: Worldcoin Launches Without Much Optimism
Few cryptocurrency launches have caught the attention of the general public quite like Worldcoin (WLD), which promised to "create a globally-inclusive identity and financial network," according to its whitepaper. This could become crucial if universal basic income (UBI) becomes a government policy to support those who lost jobs due to artificial intelligence, as the money would be allocated democratically and require proof that an individual, not an AI-created robot, received it.
As it turns out, Worldcoin's co-founder is also the CEO of OpenAI, the firm making significant strides in potentially revolutionizing economic developments through artificial intelligence
One criticism Worldcoin has been receiving is with regard to the basic tokenomics of the project. Worldcoin increased its insider allocation
The supply is initially capped at 10 billion WLD. Investors in Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin, will have to wait a year to start receiving tokens but will be fully paid out in three years. Of the 500 million WLD unlocked as of July 24, just 143 million was included as part of the circulating supply. As well, 3.52 million WLD will be unlocked daily for the community for the next three years, an amount that halves every three years until it reaches 7.5 billion in 15 years. In 2038, the community can decide an inflation rate capped at 1.5% per year thereafter.
Worldcoin saw a volatile first week that ended up disappointing those who bought into the initial rally. It began changing hands Monday at $2.82, peaking at $3.30 within two hours, only to fall to $1.91 Tuesday. It’s now at $2.27, down 20% since Monday.
[NB: The launch of Worldcoin led to a momentary price surge Monday of several other, smaller tokens using similar names such as "World Coin."]
For comparison, optimism, the native token of the layer 2 OP mainnet on which Worldcoin was launched, was down 5% in that time while bitcoin only saw a fall of 1.3%.
While the market capitalization based on circulating supply would have the project worth $252 million, its fully diluted valuation is $22.7 billion, more than three times the total diluted value of Optimism and making it the sixth-most valuable cryptocurrency, just behind USD Coin and just after Dogecoin.
Tokenomics wasn't the sole concern the market expressed about Worldcoin when it went live on Monday.
Another point of contention is "the orb," a retinal scanner that uses one's iris to create a unique identifier
That has regulators in the U.K. making inquiries to the company regarding the device.
On a now-removed page on Worldcoin's website, the issuer explained the orb as follows:
"After the orb verifies you are a unique human, your identity commitment is added to a public list of verified humans. Every time you want to prove you are a unique person, your World app generates a ZKP [zero knowledge proof] that proves you know the secret to an identity commitment, without revealing which one."
It should be noted that back in May, TechCrunch reported that several orb operators were hacked, granting the hackers access to some of the data collected by these operators.
Ethereum creator, Vitalik Buterin, defended the device and Worldcoin's initiative in a blog post, saying:
"On the whole, despite the 'dystopian vibez' of staring into an Orb and letting it scan deeply into your eyeballs, it does seem like specialized hardware systems can do quite a decent job of protecting privacy
Nevertheless, Buterin identified four risks -- privacy, accessibility, centralization, and security -- associated with Worldcoin and concluded his post cautiously:
"The concept of proof-of-personhood in principle seems very valuable, and while the various implementations have their risks, not having any proof-of-personhood at all has its risks too: a world with no proof-of-personhood seems more likely to be a world dominated by centralized identity solutions, money, small closed communities, or some combination of all three."
Others were less optimistic.
Twitter influencer ZachXBT "used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent," particularly in poorer countries, with 60% of the 2 million individuals verified over the past two years using an orb coming from either Africa or Asia.
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How warmly the crypto markets will welcome something that seems as antithetical to its founding ethos as central bank digital currencies remain to be seen. In the meantime, Worldcoin plans on ramping up the amount of orbs in the world to 1,500 from the current 200. What could possibly go wrong with collecting such data?
Data Points
Five Charts of the Week
XRP corrected after last week's gains, as a court ruled its exchange sales weren't securities due to XRP's non-security status. In contrast, Dogecoin surged as Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X, hinting at financial transactions on the platform. Speculation grows about Dogecoin's role in in Twitter's (or should we be calling it X's?) future.
Solana's native token SOL helped fuel the ecosystem's rebound over the past few days. While it's down compared to last week, it regained some ground lost this past weekend after a rally the previous week. The network is showing marked improvement after persistent outages, according to a recent report by the Solana Foundation.
Despite the positive developments, not everything is smooth sailing for the Solana ecosystem. STEPN, the second-largest Solana-based app, now trades at levels from two weeks ago, erasing its earlier 40% rally.
While a 15-day correlation does not a trend make, bitcoin is trading alongside stocks and gold a little bit more than before. The closer the correlation coefficients get to 1.0, the less weighted the more volatile cryptocurrency will be in a balanced portfolio. On a 90-day basis, bitcoin’s correlation coefficient with the S&P 500 is just 0.06 but on a one-year basis, it’s 0.5.
After a spike in June on the heels of the BlackRock iShares ETF filing, implied volatility in bitcoin options resumed its months-long decline. That means options in the cryptocurrency are now cheaper than they were four months ago.
Macro Picture
The Fed Raised Rates. Now What?
Surprising absolutely no one, the Federal Reserve raised the fed funds rate by 25 basis points on Wednesday to a range between 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest in 22 years. The question now is whether the central bank will continue hiking rates in the next few meetings. According to the CME's FedWatch Tool, there's a 22% chance rates will go up by at least another 25 basis points at the next meeting in September, and a one-third probability that rates will be even higher by November.
The Fed continues to say it's data-dependent, and one data point to look out for is the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index. The next release for the Fed's preferred inflation measure is on Friday, following last month's increase of 3.8% year-over-year. Another indicator to be released the following week is July's unemployment data.
Cryptocurrency markets were unfazed by Wednesday's rate increase, with both bitcoin and ether barely budging on the news.
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