In Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong, our reporters found lots of people were eager to take the deal.

Reporters visited booths of Worldcoin, a global blockchain project championed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong to get a better sense of who was signing up for the service and why. In all three cities, the surge of interest for registering their biometrics to the blockchain was driven primarily by the sign-up bonuses. Relatively few people were familiar with the goals of the project.

  • 0x815@feddit.deOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    @morry040

    @jarfil

    Worldcoin’s latest funding round was back in the fall, it raised USD 115m from the venture fund Blockchain Capital as lead investor, other investors included a16z crypto, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global.

    In 2021 and 2022, there have been at least 3 other funding rounds with a total volume of at least USD 215m.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      Those are investments in the “project”, meaning the marketing with the hardware, websites, more marketing, and so on.

      The WLD cryptocurrency had a $240M ICO in July 2023… which is cute, but means pretty much nothing, since there have been plenty of cryptocoins (shitcoins) that pocketed the ICO and disappeared, leaving the coin at $0.