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.

  • millie@beehaw.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    Wouldn’t it be easier to just make something of value than to pretend a piece of information that anyone can replicate is valuable?

    This is like me making a lemmy instance at this point and trying to sell accounts. Like… why not just make an actual thing and sell that if you’re going through the effort of convincing people that something worthless isn’t?

    Or like, I don’t know, find a better con?

    I get speculating on cryptocurrency a few years ago when it was spiking all over the place and there was a ton of hype about several different coins, but it’s so saturated now that I don’t see the point.

    But I also would rather put my life into enjoying and creating art than chasing dollar signs, so maybe that’s more about me than anything.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      > a piece of information that anyone can replicate

      Not sure what you mean by that. If you’re thinking of NFTs linking to GIFs, this isn’t it.

      > a few years ago […] a ton of hype about several different coins, but it’s so saturated now that I don’t see the point

      Almost all of those “coins” from a few years ago, were scams to get people’s money and run with it. They’re not saturating anything, they’re just gone.

      And if you’re into art over money… beware. All this Orb stuff is being sold as a way to tell “human” from “AI” generated art, independently of the dollars. That’s the mindset this project/scam is targeting.