Vitalik Buterin is no fan of Worldcoin, the crypto coin of ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman

Regular readers of this site know that in May of this year we already told you about Worldcoin, the cryptocurrency of Sam Altman, the CEO of the company OpenAI (which also manages ChatGPT). We warned at the time that it could raise some serious privacy concerns given that you have to get your iris scanned in order to access a digital currency and ditto wallet. Apparently we are a minority as the value of Worldcoin has skyrocketed since its launch earlier this week.

Our concerns are shared by someone important though. Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, apparently thinks as we do.

Worldcoin of Meta

Vitalik shared a lengthy blog post via social media called “What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?” . He lashes out at OpenAI and questions the company’s long-term purpose.

What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?https://t.co/yozo1buW24

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 24, 2023

He sees several problems with the concept, not least the question of why a particular company would keep a database of everyone’s irises. Furthermore, according to him, you can easily copy this image and gain access to someone else’s digital wallet.

Scan your eye to begin

ChatGPT’s parent company Open AI just announced that their digital currency is going live, called World Coin

you have to scan your eye to sign up for their digital ID, and they “might” pay you Universal Basic Income which comes from ai

Ethereum’s founder… pic.twitter.com/lABlug7RMz

— Crypto Tea (@CryptoTea_) July 24, 2023

If we understand correctly, Vitalik thus believes Worldcoin not to be much better than Meta (formerly Facebook), another company that also knows more about the personal preferences of half the Western world than the people who share photos on this site would in fact like.

Success

Be that as it may, Worldcoin has been a great success so far. On its first day of launch on July 24, the coin shot up 88%. Several platforms are already offering it for trading and more than two million users have already signed up for the service.

The problem is that Worldcoin is not available in the United States, because the project has not yet been approved there.

Altman spoke to the Financial Times:

“When we started thinking about this, we didn’t think it would end up as ‘world minus the US coin’ and here we are. I’d say there’s 95 per cent of the world’s population not in the US. The US does not make or break a project like this.”

Undoubtedly there will be a follow-up to this story.