Worldcoin, Sam Altman's Cryptocurrency Project From OpenAI Launched

JAKARTA - Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, was officially launched on Monday, July 24. The core offering of this project is World ID, which the company describes as a "digital passport" to prove that its holder is a real human being, not an AI bot.

To get World ID, customers must scan the slice directly using Worldcoin's 'orb', a silver ball measuring about the size of a boling ball. After scanning the Orb slices verify that a person is a real human, the World ID will be created.

worldcoin launches today: https://t.co/UXXE5AFznS

— Sam Altman (@sama) July 24, 2023

worldcoin launches today: https://t.co/UXXE5AFznS

The company behind Worldcoin is Tools for Humanity, which is based in San Francisco and Berlin.

The project already has 2 million users over its beta period, and with last Monday's launch, Worldcoin will increase "orbing" operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an incentive, those who register in several countries will receive the Worldcoin cryptocurrency token, WLD.

WLD prices rose in trading early Monday. In the world's largest exchange, Binance, the price peaked at 5,29 US dollars and at 1000 GMT it was at 2.49 US dollars from the initial price of 0.15 US dollars, with trading volume reaching 25.1 million US dollars (Rp376.2 billion), according to the Binance website.

"Blockchain technology can store World ID in a way that preserves privacy and cannot be controlled or closed by a single entity," co-founder Alex Blania told Reuters.

The project says that World ID will be important in a generationative AI chatbot era like ChatGPT, which produces language that is very similar to human language. World ID can be used to differentiate between real people and AI bots in cyberspace.

Altman told Reuters that Worldcoin could also help overcome how the economy would be changed by a generative AI.

One example that Altman likes is Universal Basic Income (UBI), a social benefit program that is usually run by the government where every individual has the right to pay. Because AI "will do more work that is currently being done by humans," Altman believes that UBI can help overcome the income gap. Because only real people can have World ID, this can be used to reduce fraud in the application of UBI.

Altman said that according to him, the world with UBI will be "still far in the future" and he has no clear idea which entity can regulate the distribution of money, but Worldcoin is preparing the runway to make it a reality.

"We think we need to start experimenting with things so we can figure out what to do," he said.