The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman’s WorldCoin took to Twitter to announce the launch of the highly anticipated proof of personhood Worldcoin crypto project on July 24.
As the WLD token went live, the token was up by more than 60% after being listed across major exchanges, including Binance, Bybit, Huobi, and others.
According to Coingecko, WLD’s value rose above $2.50 within an hour of its launch and went up to $3.30 during the rally.
“Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity network (World ID) built on proof of personhood and, where laws allow, a digital currency (WLD). Every human is eligible for a share of WLD simply for being human,” according to the tweet.
“This is a huge deal. The project has been in beta for a while now and in development for even longer, so we’re really excited to finally make this happen,” said Tiago Sada, head of product, engineering, and design at Tools for Humanity.
The project has been in development for over three years and has raised $115 million in a series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital for a cryptocurrency project he co-founded.
Worldcoin has faced criticism for targeting people and privacy concerns. In response to Altman’s tweet introducing the project in 2021, former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden tweeted, “Don’t catalogue eyeballs.”
The token has an initial supply of 10 billion, with 75% allocated to its community, 9.8% to the development team, and 13.5% to the Tools for Humanity investors, as per tokenomics report.
Over 2 million verified people were allocated over 43 million WLD tokens as early community members.
Over 90,000 addresses are eligible for the Worldcoin airdrop, but most of them can only get 25 WLD tokens each, according to blockchain research firm 0xScope.
Users can use their mobile app to reserve a portion of the WLD tokens. Users must go to a Worldcoin Orb location, where they will be scanned to confirm their human identity and offer evidence of their humanity, in order to receive WLD tokens.
Due to unclear cryptocurrency regulations, the WLD token is unavailable in the U.S.
